MUSEUM STAFF staging an Angus wartime exhibition are hopeful locals and visitors can help piece together a more complete picture of a dramatic incident in the skies over the county over 60 years ago.

Kirriemuir’s Gateway to the Glens Museum is drawing the crowds with its display of material and artefacts which gives an insight into how local people have coped during wartime.

Among the pieces on display in Kirriemuir’s War is part of a Wellington bomber which crashed in the Angus glens, but the staff are especially keen to find out more about an RAF Spitfire which crashed within sight of the town centre in late 1943.

Local historian David Orr, one of the Friends of Kirrie museum, has gathered some details of the crash near his Denmill Farm home and is now on a mission to track down any photographs of the incident which may be lurking in local attics.

“The Spitfire crashed on October 21, 1943, in the station field at Denmill, and I included details of it in a history of the farm,” he said.

“The pilot was Flight Sergeant Sidney B. Wilson, aged 23, who was killed after hitting Ogilvy Brothers’ factory chimney. The machine caught fire and burnt out.

“The engine travelled on for 50 yards from the remains of the fuselage, which caught fire and set off the ammunition in the machine guns which strafed the houses in the Brechin Road.

“Three boys, the farmer’s son John Reioch, John Pearson and John Kerr, were on the Denmill road at the time delivering milk, by milk cart pulled by a horse. The pilot was killed instantly on impact in the field.”

He added, “Another local man, Jim Farquharson’s recollection was that it was during the school tattie holidays. Jim was aged 12 and at the Skemmels with his pal Andrew Soutar when it crashed.

“Jim remembers it coming in, flying extremely low with half a wing missing.

“He said bullets were going off all the time the plane burned and thought the pilot had steered the plane away from the buildings towards the field.

“As the top six feet of the chimney had collapsed, the factory was closed.

“You can only wonder at what happened to the boys with the horse on the road or the boiler men in the boiler house as a result of these occurrences.”