The Ferox Hall V-1 Doodlebug

The Ferox Hall V-1 Doodlebug. . On the evening of June 23rd 1944, Peter Steer, a boarder at Tonbridge School, was reading a book in School House when he saw through the window, a V-1 directly above with a fighter plane positioned to tip it over with its wing., The V-1 subsequently fell and crashed at 10:37 pm on a tennis court behind Ferox Hall, which at the time was the Kent County Home for the Aged. The pilot involved was the Australian Flying Officer Ken Collier flying with 91 Squadron out of RAF West Malling in a Spitfire Mark XIV which had had the Merlin engine replaced by the far more: powerful Griffin engine., Collier first saw the V-1 over Beachy Head and he immediately gave chase. Getting within range he fired, but with no apparent effect. Getting increasingly frustrated he made further attempts to shoot the V-1 before running out of ammunition. By this time, he was swearing mad with his lack of success and so he formatted with the V-1 and used his wing to physically tip it over., The explosion caused slight injury to 24 people and significant superficial damage to shops and buildings including Tonbridge School and the Parish Church where the East Window was blown out., Collier's subsequent report back at RAF West Malling was greeted with considerable scepticism, but his story. was indeed confirmed when the ground crew discovered fresh black paint on the Spitfire's wing tip., The week after the incident, the Kent Messenger newspaper recorded the incident. There was purposely no mention of Tonbridge so as to prevent the Germans from gaining any useful intelligence related to the V-1's., "Quick thinking and cool courage on the part of a fighter pilot probably saved serious casualties from a Flying Bomb in Southern England on Friday evening. The pursuing pilot manoeuvred his plane close to it and diverted it from its course by tipping the wing. As a result, the bomb dropped in some gardens at the rear of an old people's home" , -- Kent Messenger, This was Ferox Hall, from which 60 residents were evacuated and it is the building to the right of this information board., What Collier did became part of official RAF history and records show that on June 23rd 1944, a V-1 was tipped out of control by an RAF fighter for the first time. Sadly, Collier later died when he was shot down in December 1944.