• 1916: Battle of the Somme

• 1918: End of 1st World War

• 1919: 1st trans-atlantic flight

• 1920: League of Nations founded

• 1922: Irish Free State founded

• 1924: Lenin dies

• 1926: General Strike

• 1928: Women get the vote

• 1934: Hitler assumes power in Germany

• 1936: Regular BBC TV broadcasts begin

• 1939: Start of 2nd World War

• 1940: Dunkirk evacuation

• 1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbour

• 1944: "D-Day" landings in France

• 1945: End of 2nd World War

• 1946: USA tests atom bomb at Bikini Island

• 1947: Sound Barrier broken

• 1948: NHS founded

• 1950: Korean War starts

• 1951: Suez "Crisis"

• 1953: Queen Elizabeth II crowned

• 1954: Bannister runs 1st 4 minute mile

• 1955: Glynde Place opened to the public

• 1955: ITV starts broadcasting

• 1957: 1st dog in space

• 1958: Gatwick Airport opened

• 1959: M1, the 1st motoway, opened

• 1961: 1st man in space

• 1963: US President Kennedy assassinated

• 1965: Post Office Tower opened

• 1966: England win World Cup

WW2 Crashed Aircraft

The illustration below shows the approximate positions of the aircraft that crashed on the downs above Beddingham during World War Two plotted onto a contemporary OS map published just after the war ended.

The co-ordinates of each crash site were included in the Crashed Aircraft Reports and clicking on the map will take you to the relevant report where we've "redacted" the grid references because all crashed aircraft sites from WWII are classed as protected monuments.

The map references in the Crashed Aircraft Reports were probably fairly approximate and have been converted from the War Office grid references used at the time to the modern OS grid references using the Fielden Maps Co-ordinate Converter. Converting between the two co-ordinate systems introduces a possible error of up to 100m. The combination of these factors mean it would be sensible to regard the positions shown as very approximate.