Detectorist searches for family of wartime pilot

A METAL detectorist who found the remains of a crashed Spitfire is trying to track down the family of the pilot who died.

Danny Jones has recovered more than 600 parts of the Second World War fighter plane since first discovering the wreckage in March last year in a wood near Henley.

Since then the engineer has researched the parts and combed through military records to learn more about the crash.

Mr Jones, 54, of Elizabeth Close, Henley, has tracked the RAF plane back to a Polish pilot who crashed during a training flight in 1942.

He said: “I feel a personal connection to him and feel quite close to him having done all this research. I talk about him all the time.”

Mr Jones has lived in the town all his life and has been metal detecting since he was a small boy.

He would scour Harpsden Wood for pennies and cans with his father Peter using a small metal detector he was given for Christmas.

“I loved it even back then,” he said. “I love history and things that are old that you can make up your own stories about when you find them.”

Mr Jones left Gillotts School at 16 and became an apprentice at Henley engineering company George Stow.

He worked at the Mars chocolate factory in Slough and is now employed at the Heathrow Worldwide Distribution Centre in Langley.

He and his wife Justine, 52, had five children, Lauren, 28, Luke, 26, Oliver, 24, Lily, 21, and Scarlett, 11.

Being busy with work and family and watching his beloved Oxford United FC, he had little time for metal detecting until nine years ago, when he bought a Garratt Ace 250 detector.

He said: “I’m out walking with the dog most of the day so I thought. ‘While I’m out I might as well as metal detect at the same time’.”

He would spend two days a week detecting accompanied by Oscar the dog and his youngest daughter.

They would search fields and woods around Henley for up 10 hours a day, sometimes not returning home until dark. Mr Jones’s technique involves going around the boundary of the field first, then from corner to corner before focusing in on hot spots.

He said: “This is where there might have been a settlement or dwelling, or even just fetes and parties from a few years ago.

“I also go for timelines. If I find a George V penny from 1921 in one corner and a Roman coin in the other, I generally go for the older parts.

“Oxfordshire is superb for metal detecting. It has got a lot of history. Some detectorists go all over the country but I never leave the county.

“I’m not a member of a club, I just like to metal detect with the dog and find local history around the area.

“It’s an amazing way to spend a day. You’re out in the fresh air and you can see all the wildlife. I’m a country boy, not one for gadgets or TV. I want to be outside, no matter the weather. Cold, warm or wet, I’m out there.”

On a cold day in March last year, Mr Jones was detecting in a wood on the outskirts of Henley when his detector started to beep near a grass bank.

He said: “I made a few random finds, a couple of old pennies and a lot of junk, but then I come across this one little bracket.

“Initially I thought it was just like any other item but I cleaned it up with my fingers and, being an engineer, knew straight away it was an aircraft part.

“The next day I went back and covered the same area. When an aircraft comes down it scatters over a massive area.

“I started hearing ‘beep, beep, beep’. I didn’t even have to dig out a lot of them, they were surface finds underneath leaves.”

By the end of the second day, he had found 30 small pieces from the cockpit and fuselage.

Mr Jones recalled: “At this point I’m getting excited. I know it’s an aircraft but I don’t know what type. I knew it had to be military because some parts were painted in military greens and blues.

“I knew 100 per cent there had been a crash because of the way everything was scattered and how the metal had deformed and broken.”

He took home the parts he had gathered, cleaned them in a bucket of water and showed them to his family.

Over the next two weeks, Mr Jones returned to the site five times and recovered about 100 pieces over an area of 200 sq m.

His finds include bullets, engine parts and a clock from the plane’s cockpit.

One item was a metal plate reading “Warning! Do not re-cock gun whilst in flight”, confirming that it was a British plane.

Mr Jones contacted the Ministry of Defence and was told to apply for a licence to continue excavating.

This meant that although he could still detect and claim surface finds, he could no longer dig.

“It felt terrible,” he said. “I wanted to go out and carrying on digging and find some more information about the plane.”

After about six weeks, the MoD denied his application as the records showed human remains had been found at the crash site.

By this point, Mr Jones had gathered about 600 pieces of the plane and was able to begin his research.

He said: “I wanted to get down to the bottom of what this plane was and who was flying it. It’s exciting as you start to piece it together and things become clearer.

“It’s such a joy to find more and more information as you go along. It’s like a puzzle.”

By posting pictures of the parts on an online forum, he discovered they were from a Spitfire Mk IIb.

He then searched military records for Spitfires that had come down near Henley and found a record of a crash from May 29, 1942.

Using records from the National Archives, he traced the plane back to Polish pilot Sylwester Jerzy Godlewski.

The pilot, part of the 302 Polish Fighter Squadron in the RAF, had been taking part in high-altitude training flight when his plane crashed.

A Ministry of Defence report on the incident said: “The pilot probably fainted from unknowns. The aircraft went into a spin, crashing into a wood, and was completely destroyed.”

Mr Jones was able to gather more information about the crash from a witness statement made by another pilot.

He said: “They seem to think that when he went to high altitude he didn’t have his oxygen on and blacked out.

“By the time he came round he was in a spin. He tried to put his oxygen on but it was too late and he crashed.”

Mr Godlewski’s remains were taken to a mortuary at RAF Benson and the larger pieces of the Spitfire taken to Plant Oxford, a car factory in Cowley.

Mr Jones said: “It sometimes makes me sad thinking about his crash. Any pilot who died at age 27 and miles from their home is sad.

“He’d probably had to leave his family in Poland to come over and fight for the British. All in all it is very sad. It was still early days of flying and pilots had such a short life. Most of them knew it was going to be a short war for them.

“I just think it was such a brave thing to do. He was fighting for his country and our country and everyone’s right to freedom.”

In March, this year Mr Jones visited the pilot’s grave at Northwood Cemetery in Hillingdon.

He said: “I spent an hour there in the pouring rain and I went round the graves of all the other pilots in his squadron.

“I was soaked through to my pants but I took a couple of the little parts and put them on his grave.”

He took more parts to the remembrance service in Henley last November, holding them behind his back for the minute’s silence.

He now hopes to have the parts placed in the River & Rowing Museum in Mill Meadows.

Mr Jones said: “It’s a local museum and a lot of people from Henley go, including me, as well as people from outside the area. There’s a lot of Polish people living in the area and it would be nice for them to see one of their own.”

He has spoken to Polish residents of Henley and researched online to try to trace Mr Godlewski’s family.

Mr Jones said: “I think about him quite a lot and I’m still researching even now. I would like to track down his family and maybe take them to the site.”