D-Day Plus One: Shot Down and on the Run in France

The day after D-Day, the most momentous day of the Second World War, Frank Holland was an RAF pilot whose Typhoon aircraft had just been hit by German anti-aircraft fire during a low flying attack on a marshaling yard in Normandy.

He managed to take the aircraft up to 1200 feet but then the engine went dead and his Typhoon soon began heading towards the earth at an accelerating and frightening speed. Struggling frantically, he just barely got free of the cockpit and baled out four or five seconds before the crash. His parachute didn’t open but he fell into a wood, crashing through the branches of an oak to dangle precariously fifteen feet up.

Breathing hard, he experienced a few seconds of relief at survival. But then he realised German troops would be swarming around within minutes. He had to get away, and fast…

So begins Frank’s tremendous adventure as he evaded capture for months, sometimes by barely a whisker, to make it back home to the city of his birth, Cambridge.