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Mysterious Messerschmitt flight
Q In the May issue, the article ‘ Luftwaffe Rising’ recounting Sqn Ldr Cedric Williams’ two-week tour of airfields and factories in pre-war Germany, prompted Freddie O’ Dwyer to return to his enquiry published in the March 2018 edition concerning the unexpected visit to Baldonnel military aerodrome near Dublin in June 1938 of a Messerschmitt Bf 108, D-IDNT, crewed by two Luftwaffe officers. Follow-up letters from readers revealed that prior to the flight to Ireland, the Messerschmitt had been refuelled at Renfrew and that the visit of six German aircraft to Britain for the Manx Air Derby race had been signed off by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring.
Freddie continues, “While the Irish authorities protested to the German minister in Dublin, nobody in Britain seems to have been too bothered about the subsequent movement of the six aircraft. On the face of it, Williams’ visit could be seen as a reciprocal arrangement, but in fact it followed a less successful clandest…
