The day a plane crashed into Rusthall’s village school

An eventful morning

21st March 1946 was an ordinary weekday morning in the village of Rusthall. The Second World War had been over for nine months and demobbed soldiers had begun to return to children who barely recognised them. The sound of an aeroplane overhead was not unusual. On the high street a school of mixed infants aged between five and seven was in the building which is now the library, and the present-day school building nearby was then for girls aged between seven and eleven.

Albert Hyder was at work in the council depot which used to be at the top of Grange Road when he heard the plane. He had been demobilised from his wartime service as an RAF fire officer two months before. He wrote an account of events as he remembered them.

“I instinctively realised that the pilot was in trouble as the plane was making a peculiar noise, which indicated to me that the craft was probably on fire. I rushed out of the workshops at the depot and mounted my motor cycle at the same time as the impact of the crashed aircraft took place, and I saw smoke rising from the direction of Rusthall High Street as I proceeded to the scene of the crash.

As I was so near to the crash, I was probably one of the first members of the emergency services to arrive at the scene which presented a very gruesome sight, for the plane had crashed immediately between two schools, St Paul’s Infants and St Paul’s Primary schools.”

Dennis Penfold was a five-year-old infant school pupil that day. He has added to his own recollections with research. ‘There was a very loud bang, as the plane crashed into the brick wall separating the rear of the Marquee pub in Salisbury Rd (neither exist today) and the girls school toilet block. The plane immediately burst into flames with fuel spraying into the rooms of the public house and pieces of fuselage and engine hurled into the adjoining gardens. As the plane was largely constructed of wood, it burned fiercely. The club room and first floor bedrooms of the Marquee were also on fire.

Mr A H Holland, landlord of the pub was thrown forward – whilst eating lunch – and Mrs Bet Young, who was cleaning the pub, was thrown across the room. There was a great wall of fire between the pub and the playground. The landlord and neighbours doused the flames with water and salvaged some of the furniture. Next door, a disabled man called Jessie Groves unsuccessfully tried to save his nine chickens and three rabbits from under the burning debris.’

At 11am the infants were in their classroom, but the older girls were still out on the playground for their morning break. The school’s logbook goes from recording details of supply teachers with colds to the following entry:

‘A mosquito plane crashed and burst into flames in the drive a few yards from the school. Children were playing. One girl’s hair slightly singed and arm slightly burnt, a second hurt knees. Pilot was killed. The school was quickly assembled, and roll called. No other casualties. School dismissed at 11.40 for the rest of the day by Major Moore, the Divisional Officer, who was quickly on the scene. Police. Fire Service also arrived very quickly. It was a miracle the damage and casualties were not more serious. Children and staff behaved splendidly.’

Ten-year-old Jean Diplock of 13 Grange Gardens was the girl whose hair and arm were burnt. “We knew the plane was going to come down, but we did not know which way to run,’ she told the Kent and Sussex Courier. Her fellow pupil Vera Altmann, a Jewish refugee, hurt her knees when she fell over trying to run away.

Albert Hyder remembered: ‘My first thoughts as I entered the drive of the school was for the safety of the children… I was greatly relieved to hear from teachers that apart from being sprayed by fuel from the crashing plane, everyone appeared to be alright, and I would like to commend the prompt action of the teachers on the way they dealt with the incident.

By this time my fire service colleagues, and the police had arrived at the scene, and fire-fighting operations commenced immediately.

The plane had made a deep crater in the ground, in which there was an accumulation of fuel, oil and other flammable materials and due to small pockets of fire, these materials were continually reigniting. As the body of the pilot was still in the cockpit, we had the grim task of breaking away sections of fuselage and digging away soil, in order to get to the cockpit but we were interrupted many times by re-ignition which, of course, also caused dense smoke so visibility was reduced.’

As news that a plane had crashed at the school spread, parents rushed fearfully down the High Street. Dennis Penfold at the Infant school was told to go home, without a roll call taking place. His mother saw his teacher on the High Street, but no Dennis. He was eventually found by Mrs Penfold peeping through a hole in the fence at the back of the infant school, looking at the scene of smoke and fire from the burning pub.

Who was the pilot?

Acting Wing Commander Kenneth Charles Daymond Dart was the son of Rev. Charles Daymond Dart and Nellie Kathleen Dart, of Linden Park in Tunbridge Wells. He was married to Meryl Rosemary Dart, and they had a four-month-old baby daughter. He was just twenty-four years old, had fought in the Battle of Britain and been awarded a Distinguished Flying Order for skill and courage in the air in 1941. His flight on 21st March 1946 was to have been his last for the RAF before he started flying for the British and Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

The reason for the crash was unknown, the coroner stating:

‘The pilot was very experienced and capable and with excellent flying records, and it was difficult to imagine he would do anything foolhardy or foolish. Be that as it may, and whatever the reason, the machine did crash with deplorable result. It might have been there was some latent defect in the machine which developed during flight…it was extremely fortunate the machine fell where it did and that there were no other casualties.’

Albert Hyder had this opinion; ‘The position of the crashed plane indicated that the aircraft had landed in an almost vertical position, and my thoughts are that the pilot had endeavoured to make a landing on Rusthall Common and, possibly having lost air speed, realised he was crashing in a residential area, he dropped the nose of the plane suddenly. This saved many lives, for there is no doubt whatsoever that had the aircraft come down in a normal horizontal landing position, it would have ploughed through one, and possibly two, schools with loss of life and, of course, several buildings on fire.

Acting Wing Commander Kenneth Charles Daymond Dart

The school that remembers

Every Remembrance Day the school hold a memorial ceremony for all the service men and women who have lost their lives in war, and for Wing Commander Dart, who died after the war but fought bravely during World War Two. There is a memorial for him on the school drive on the site of the crash, and the children leave a poppy wreath on it every year. It seems especially appropriate to remember Kenneth Dart at the school because it is possible that his actions in the moments before his death meant that the lives of children in the school were spared.

This article could not have been written without the help of Dennis Penfold of the Rusthall Local History Society, who lent me files and provided images from his personal archive of local history items and shared his memories. It originally appeared in the January issue of Rusthall Life magazine. With thanks to Dennis, this article is dedicated to the memory of Kenneth Charles Daymond Dart, who was just 24 when he died.