THE son of a German bomber pilot whose plane was shot down by a Spitfire in the Second World War has visited the crash site.

Rudolf Theopold, pictured below, was piloting the Heinkel 111P bomber with five people on board in the skies above Sussex on August 16, 1940, when the plane had to make an emergency landing when it was damaged by a fighter in pursuit.

The bomber crashed close to Honeysuckle Lane in High Salvington, near Worthing, near an anti-aircraft gun.

British soldiers moved on to the site and three surviving airmen, including the 20-year-old Lieutenant Theopold, were captured and put in a Canadian prison camp where they were kept until the war ended.

Two airmen, Albert Weber and Johannes Moorfeld, died in the crash and the bomber became an attraction for scavengers. It was found to have more than 400 bullet holes riddling its fuselage.

Amateur historian Graham Lelliott, from Sompting, visited the site last week along with the pilot’s son Klaus Theopold and his 11-year-old granddaughter.

Eight years ago, Mr Lelliott wrote his first book A German Bomber On Worthing Soil, which detailed his research into the crash.

He said: “I always hoped I would meet someone connected to the crash.

“I tried my upmost when I was researching the book to get in touch and there was always this hope I might meet one of the airmen or a member of their families, so for Klaus to come over is the icing on the cake.

“It is quite surreal really. Here are these countries who were at war and now the family are here standing in the same field in which he was detained.”

Mr Lelliott was inspired to write the book after his grandfather, Jack Kennard, from Tarring, recalled witnessing the event as a teenager.

Mr Theopold said the whole experience had been “moving” and, while he had always been interested in his father’s Luftwaffe career, the pilot rarely spoke of it.

The family flew in through Heathrow, then known as the Great West Aerodrome, which had been the target of the Heinkel.

Rudolf died in 2008.