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A Downed Pilot Who Ran Away in a Stolen Enemy Plane and Other Historic Escapes

Khalid Elhassan September 13, 2020 28 min

A P=51 making a low level pass on a German airplane. Art Station

26. A Tense Meeting

During his forced descent, Captain Partridge had spotted a dwelling near his intended landing site, which turned out to be a reindeer hunter’s hut. After crash landing, he and Bostock trudged through high snow drifts to find shelter there. No sooner had the British airmen made it to the hut, shaken off the snow, and started to warm themselves, than a piercing whistle alerted them that others were in the area. Through the swirling snow, they saw three figures approaching their hut: the downed Heinkel’s surviving crew.

Understandably, the Germans men were not in a good mood, alternating between scowls and shouts, and wildly gesticulating as they brandished pistols and knives while approaching the British airmen. The Germans were in a dangerous frame of mind, unlikely to let bygones be bygones and be good sports if they came across those who had shot them down. So to save their lives, Partridge and Bostock lied.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.