The Events From This Side

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The Irish Adventure of Richard Kukura and Tommy Hulme and the fate of their Beaufighter JL710


The Events From This Side

by Dennis Burke

On the night of March 17th, 1943, as German forces recaptured Kharkov in the Ukraine, as the British Eighth Army prepared to assault Axis forces in Tunisia and as Japanese forces continued their inexorable advance into Burma, the area around the village of Bawnboy, amid the rolling hills of County Cavan, Ireland received three unexpected visitors. One of these was a fearsome twin engined strike fighter of the Royal Air Force (RAF), a Bristol Beaufighter. The two other visitors were probably less fearsome, they were the pilot and navigator of the stricken aircraft. All that was known officially for many years was that an aircraft had crashed, without its crew into the end of St. Mogues’s Island in Templeport Lake. Its crew it was assumed had nailed out and landed in Northern Ireland.

One of over 150 such incidents involving belligerent aircraft in Ireland during 1939 and 1945 little appeared to be publicly known about this incident until 2004 when I was contacted by two interested Bawnboy locals, Nigel and John wondering if I might know any detailed information on the incident. I could not help them with any more detailed knowledge at that time. Luckily, included in the correspondences at that time was David Earl, author and researcher of Second World War high ground aircraft crashes. He suggested that the aircraft might well be Beaufighter serial number JL710.

Nigel, a Templeport resident, told, "I live very near St Mogue's Island and as a child in the fifties and early sixties used to love rowing to the island when the lake was low and finding pieces of the plane. Of course the Irish Army had taken most of it away very soon after the accident and there were only pieces of aluminium cladding, spars and other small pieces of twisted metal left to find. Many people at the time used to feed their chickens off pieces of the flat sections. It is still possible to find pieces of aluminium in the water although tourists have found and taken away most of them now".

He continued, "Many local people remember the crash and hearing the plane circling for ages. Some thought they were going to be bombed! Just before the crash a local woman heard a bang on the roof of her house about a mile and a half away. She thought a bomb had been dropped which hadn't exploded. Some days later, she had a man go up on the roof to investigate. He found a wooden box, painted RAF Blue, which he took down. It contained a 'Hand bearing compass', known as a Type 06A. The 06A compass handle contains a torch, which may be used independently but when normally screwed to the base of the compass illuminates the rose for taking night bearings through the prism. On the inside of the hinged lid of the box there is a rubber stamped mark indicating that the compass was checked at the Admiralty Compass Observatory on 30 May 1942. As I had always coveted the compass, the woman, who had been a family friend who had known my great grandparents, gave it to me sometime in the late sixties."

Compass type 06A  Compass with box
The type 06A Compass and it with the torch base fitted and the box

(Click on them for larger images)

Aidan McGovern of Kildoagh told his neighbour Nigel in March 2004 that in March 1943 he was a young adolescent confined to home because he wasn't well. His home is within a short distance of St. Mogue's Island and very close to where the council boat, or (Erne type) cot as it was then, was kept to carry the funeral corteges out to burials on St. Mogue's Island.

Aidan McGovern with his sister Mena

Above: Aidan and his sister Mena on his new BSA350 in front of their old house at the edge of Templeport Lake over which the plane flew very low, almost skimming the chimney just before crashing.
Photo: Aidan McGovern, about 1953

Below:A 'Cot' boat at Templeport Lake with the 'Crash' Island at the right.

Cot at Templeport Lake

On St Patrick's night 1943 there was a Parochial dance in the hall of the workhouse in Bawnboy and an aeroplane was heard circling progressively lower, making circles of about five miles diameter between Corlough and Templeport. After the noise of the circling plane ceased abruptly many of the revellers realizing that it had crashed went searching and some were nearly lost on Gowlagh bog where they thought the aircraft had come down.

Aidan's father Michael was visiting Rector Armstrong at the Rectory and was about to leave for home at 11 o'clock when the plane flew very low over Corboy Hill. It crashed in the water with a very loud explosion and flash slightly to the North of St. Mogue's Island but just short of the adjacent island. Aidan's father and the rector took the Rector's boat out in the dark to the crash location and attempted to look for survivors but as calling didn't elicit any response and the search in the dark was abandoned due to the smell of petrol and the danger of fire.

Michael McGovern rowing the old Cot.
Michael McGovern rowing the old 'Cot' with Cannon Tiernan behind.
(Photo: Fr Brown S.J. 1939 from Chris Maguire's book Bawnboy and Templeport 1999)

The next morning the Garda (police) arrived and shortly after security was taken over by the Irish Army who brought in a raft to remove all they could. Security was very tight and no local people were allowed near the crash site. The operation took up to three weeks during which time he remembers having some of the soldiers billeted in the family home. They slept beside the fire in the kitchen/living room in their own sleeping bags. At one stage Aidan was shown the belts of 20mm machine gun ammunition, every second shell of which was a tracer. He particularly remembers one of the propellers with yellow tipped blades, which 'weighed about six stone', was around his house for many years, but regrettably may have been put into the foundations of their new house, built in the late fifties. In 2006 when I was introduced to him, he recalled the salvaged fuel tanks having a thick rubber coating on the insides which reflects the aircraft’s self sealing fuel tanks.

Another local resident David Breiden of Ballyconnell remembers watching from the window in his school classroom the boats and raft going to and back from the Island when the army were recovering whatever they could. When asked about the dance in Bawnboy he told that he thought there was another dance in Templeport Hall on the same night. Since St Patrick's day would have been a public holiday and as dance halls were small and most people had to walk or cycle it would have been very probable that dances were held in both locations. He was only eleven and would have been too young at the time to attend dances!

Armed with this knowledge I requested a copy of the aircraft's 1943 crash report from the RAF Museum at Hendon, London. I was delighted to receive this some time in 2004 and from this was able to obtain the pilot's name, one R. Kakura (sic). This in itself would not have helped much except that the form recorded his nationality as Australian. This was a stroke of luck of sorts as one can search for details of all wartime Australian personnel on an Australian Government website. This quickly confirmed the name and serial number of the man as Richard Kukura 415155 and gave me his place of enlistment. It was with some hope that I contacted some of the local radio stations and war museum in the locality. However, having passed on this seemingly limited information to Nigel and John in Cavan, it was John who made the subsequent lucky find of a Stephanie Kukura on a genealogy web site. Stephanie turned out to be none other than our pilots nephew's wife. And, more surprisingly, Richard was found to be alive and well in Perth Western Australia. And so John and Nigel were able to correspond with Richard and the results of this are visible in this publication. Over the ensuing two years Richard was able to recount for us the details of their escape from their lost aircraft and also of their subsequent service in the Mediterranean theatre. It was through Richard that we also learned that unfortunately Tommy had passed away in 1995.

A visit in October 2005 to the Irish Military Archives allowed me to view the Irish Army Intelligence File, on the incident. , the file is a little sparse for the simple reason that the day after the crash in Cavan, a Liberator bomber landed in Donegal and the investigating officer had to make his way to that location to deal with the crew of seven on that aircraft. At the time that the report was filed, it was recorded that the crew had landed in Northern Ireland after bailing out. The aircraft was described as having crashed "Into a harbour of a small island and was completely wrecked". The aircraft was described as having blown up on impact, with the wreckage lying a about 100 yards from the shore. The fuselage was said to be blocking the way to the graveyard, there being a graveyard on the island with the remains of a church. Local boats were reported to be unsuitable for accessing the wreckage. Nevertheless, as can be seen Irish Army personnel salvaged the wreckage.

In May 2006, Nigel, finally managed to get me to visit the area around Bawnboy. Nigel was kind enough bring me to the three landing sites, those of Richard, Tommy and their Beaufighter. I was also shown one of the casings from the aircrafts 20mm cannon shells and the many remaining pieces of the unfortunate aircraft. I was introduced to Aidan McGovern who as a child witnessed the Army recovery of the aircraft wreckage. I cannot thank Nigel enough for the hospitality shown to me on the day and the time he gave over to me. It was very much appreciated!

Finally by another happy coincidence, Tommy's daughter Liz had written to Richard in 2006 to keep in touch and by reply she was told of Nigel's efforts to trace this history. Liz has since then been able to fill in some of the details of Tommy's experiences on that night in March 1943.

And so, it is with delight that I thank Nigel and the people of Bawnboy for bringing back to life a small and lost part of Ireland’s Emergency history, and I welcome the families of Richard Kukura and Tommy Hulme back to the area where their relatives began their wartime adventures, it is my honour to have assisted in whatever small way to this happy event.

Dennis Burke
June 2006

Snippets

During a telephone call to his sister Maura now living in England earlier this week Aidan McGovern mentioned he was going to attend the meeting to discuss the Beaufighter crash and asked her if she remembered anything of the event. She did! She told her brother Aidan that not only did she hear the plane but saw it through the house window. She described it as making a tremendous roar, having flashing lights and must have been just over chimney level. She thought it clipped two Ash trees which were between the lake and the front of their house.
Aidan had often wondered where his mother had been on that night. According to his sister Maura their mother had been visiting a elderly neighbour, a Mrs Reilly who lived a few hundred yards towards the main road.
When their mother returned she was extremely relieved that her children were safe; having been so close to death if the plane had hit the roof.
If you read Dennis Burke’s account you may remember that their father Michael McGovern had spent the evening up at the rectory then went out in the boat with the Rector to the crash site to look for survivors.
Dennis Burke holding a piece of a spar from JL710 in photo taken from St Mogue’s Island jetty.
Part of the small Island can be seen on the right. JL710 probably would have circled in from the left, low across the farm buildings in the distant centre then hit the water to the right of the rowing boat behind Dennis.

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