Introduction

Today, the High Weald of East Sussex is one of the most peaceful landscapes in southern England. Narrow lanes wind between woods and fields, old farms sit among wooded ridges, and from the higher ground there are long views across a countryside that can seem almost untouched by the modern world.

It is difficult to imagine this same landscape with a battle raging in the skies above it.

Yet during the summer and autumn of 1940, south-east England stood beneath the Battle of Britain. German bombers and fighters crossed the coast while RAF pilots climbed to intercept them, often fighting at great height before damaged aircraft spiralled back towards the countryside below.

The stakes extended far beyond the individual battles taking place overhead. After the fall of France, Germany was preparing Operation Sea Lion, the proposed invasion of Britain. Before an invasion could realistically proceed, the Luftwaffe needed to gain air superiority over southern England and the English Channel. Fighter Command prevented that from happening, and the invasion was ultimately postponed indefinitely.

By late September the most famous day of the battle — 15 September — had already passed, but the fighting had certainly not stopped. On 27 September 1940, heavy Luftwaffe attacks were again launched towards London and southern England. Hundreds of aircraft were in the air.

Among the RAF pilots fighting that day were Percival Burton, James Meaker and Reginald Rimmer.

All three would be dead before the day was over.

The following afternoon, Peter Guerin Crofts would also lose his life over this same part of East Sussex.

Today, four small memorials survive within the landscape where they fell. None is a grand national monument. One stands beside an old oak tree now surrounded by new houses. Another is so small beside a busy country road that thousands of motorists must pass without ever noticing it. Another was erected by a pilot’s family, while another originated with the mother of the young man who died nearby.

Without those acts of remembrance, there would be almost nothing in the modern landscape to tell us what happened here.

These are the stories of four young Battle of Britain pilots, lost over East Sussex within little more than 24 hours.

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Percival “Percy” Ross-Frames Burton – Hailsham

Flying Officer Percival Ross-Frames Burton, usually known as Percy, was 23 years old. Born in South Africa, he had come to Britain to study jurisprudence at Christ Church, Oxford, where he also learned to fly with the Oxford University Air Squadron.

By the summer of 1940 he was flying Hawker Hurricanes with No. 249 Squadron RAF.

On the morning of 27 September 1940, 249 Squadron intercepted a formation of Messerschmitt Bf 110 twin-engined fighters. Burton pursued one of them southwards across Sussex at extremely low level, at times reportedly little more than treetop height.

Near Hailsham, Burton’s guns stopped firing, probably because his ammunition had been exhausted.

What happened next was extraordinary.

Eyewitness accounts indicated that Burton deliberately brought his Hurricane down onto the German aircraft, severing the Messerschmitt’s tail. The Bf 110 crashed, killing both German crewmen. Burton’s Hurricane lost part of a wing and crashed into a large oak tree at New Barn Farm near Station Road. Burton was killed.

The oak survived.

That makes visiting the location today particularly affecting. Hailsham has expanded around it and modern housing now reaches almost to the crash site. Yet the old tree remains, with a wooden cross marking Burton’s connection to this particular piece of ground.

The site itself has recently received greater protection and recognition. In September 2025, on the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, a new memorial to Burton was officially unveiled as part of the surrounding Cuckoo Fields development.

The contrast is remarkable: new homes, new roads and an expanding Sussex town surrounding an oak that witnessed an event from another world.

Burton is also remembered in the name Burton Walk in Hailsham.

But there is another connection that makes his story particularly poignant.

One of Burton’s friends and fellow pilots in 249 Squadron was James Meaker.

A surviving photograph shows the two young pilots together.

Later that same day, Meaker too would be dead.

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James Reginald Bryan Meaker – Brightling

Pilot Officer James Reginald Bryan Meaker was just 21.

Born in Kinsale, County Cork, he had grown up in Sussex and attended Chichester High School. Before joining the RAF in 1939, he worked as a journalist for the Chichester Observer.

By September 1940 he had become an experienced and successful fighter pilot with 249 Squadron, flying Hurricanes alongside Percy Burton.

Meaker had already seen combat during the Norwegian campaign before joining the fighting over Britain. During August and September he accumulated a considerable combat record, claiming or sharing in the destruction of a number of German aircraft.

On 15 September 1940, now commemorated as Battle of Britain Day, he was involved in several successful engagements.

Twelve days later he took off again.

During fighting on 27 September, Meaker initially shared in the destruction of a Messerschmitt Bf 110. He subsequently attacked a Junkers Ju 88 bomber, but his Hurricane was hit by defensive fire.

Meaker managed to bale out.

His parachute never opened.

His body fell into Warren Field at Brightling Park, while his Hurricane P3834 came down separately at Brake Field near Giffords Farm. He was killed only hours after his friend and squadron colleague Percy Burton.

Meaker was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was presented to his parents by King George VI.

Yet the memorial marking the landscape where he fell did not appear until much later.

On 27 September 1990 — exactly fifty years after Meaker’s death — Graham Alderson erected the small memorial beside the road near Giffords Farm.

It is perhaps the easiest of these four memorials to miss.

There is no visitor centre and no convenient car park. It is little more than a small marker beside a busy rural road. Finding somewhere safe to stop requires going farther along the road and approaching on foot.

Cars rush past only a few feet away.

Most of the people inside them probably have no idea why that small memorial is there.

That is precisely what makes places like this so important.

Without one person’s decision to mark the location half a century after the event, there would be virtually nothing here to connect this peaceful corner of the High Weald with a 21-year-old Hurricane pilot who fell from the sky during one of the defining battles of the Second World War.

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Flight Lieutenant Reginald Frank Rimmer – Burwash

Only minutes after Meaker was lost, another Hurricane came down farther east near Burwash.

Flight Lieutenant Reginald Frank Rimmer was also just 21 years old.

Rimmer served with No. 229 Squadron RAF and was flying Hurricane V6782 on 27 September 1940.

At approximately 3.30pm, during combat with German fighters, his aircraft was shot down and crashed near Franchise Manor at Burwash. Rimmer was killed. The Burwash Roll of Honour records that his Hurricane was lost in combat with a Messerschmitt Bf 109.

A memorial was later erected by his family close to where the aircraft came down.

Today the setting could hardly feel further removed from an aerial battlefield.

The memorial sits within the rolling, wooded countryside around Burwash: old lanes, farms, fields and the distinctive ridges and valleys of the High Weald.

Standing there now, there is little to suggest what was happening above this landscape on the afternoon of 27 September 1940.

But within the space of a single day, three very young Hurricane pilots — Burton, Meaker and Rimmer — had fallen across this relatively small part of East Sussex.

The countryside absorbed the wreckage.

The war moved on.

Eventually the fields returned to farming, roads carried ordinary traffic again and generations grew up for whom the Battle of Britain was history rather than lived experience.

Only the memorial remained to connect Rimmer with the place where his final flight ended.

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Flying Officer Peter Guerin Crofts – Dallington

The following day, 28 September 1940, the fighting continued.

Flying Officer Peter Guerin Crofts was 22.

Crofts had joined the RAF before the war and initially served with bomber units, including No. 150 Squadron flying Fairey Battles. In August 1940, with the Battle of Britain underway, he volunteered for Fighter Command.

After a brief posting to 615 Squadron, he joined No. 605 Squadron, flying Hurricanes from Croydon.

He had been with the squadron for only around two weeks when he flew his final sortie.

On the afternoon of 28 September, Crofts’ Hurricane V6699 was shot down during combat over East Sussex. He baled out but died after coming down near Redpale, between Dallington and Woods Corner. His Hurricane crashed separately at Earls Down.

A small cross now marks the location close to where he fell.

According to the history of Dallington, the original wooden cross was erected by Crofts’ mother. The memorial has subsequently continued to be cared for, preserving the connection between Crofts and the landscape more than eight decades after his death.

Again, it is a remarkably modest memorial.

There is nothing here proportional to the significance of the events taking place in the skies in 1940. It is simply a cross beside a rural Sussex road, surrounded by the landscape of the High Weald.

Yet perhaps that is what makes these memorials so moving.

They bring an enormous historical event back down to the scale of an individual person.

Peter Crofts was not simply one of “The Few”. He was a 22-year-old man who climbed into a Hurricane on 28 September 1940 and never returned.

His mother made sure the place where he fell would not be entirely forgotten.

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Four Memorials in a Peaceful Landscape

More than eight decades later, it is hard to reconcile the High Weald we know today with the landscape of September 1940.

Walk these lanes now and you hear birds, farm machinery and the occasional passing car. The woods have grown, fields have changed and towns such as Hailsham have expanded dramatically.

Look upwards and the skies are usually empty apart from airliners travelling high overhead.

On 27 and 28 September 1940, those same skies were filled with Hurricanes, Spitfires, Messerschmitts and bombers fighting across southern England.

Burton, Meaker, Rimmer and Crofts represent only four of the men who came down here. A local history of the Brightling area records 935 wartime aircraft crashes across Sussex, including British, American and German aircraft. Whatever precise boundary or methodology is used for such totals, the surviving crash sites and memorials make one thing clear: the aerial war left its mark all across the Sussex landscape.

Most of those locations are now invisible.

Fields were repaired. Wreckage was removed or gradually buried. Trees grew again. Memories faded as the generations who witnessed the war disappeared.

That makes the surviving memorials particularly valuable.

Percy Burton’s oak survived and is once again being formally preserved.

Reginald Rimmer’s family marked the place where his Hurricane came down.

Peter Crofts’ mother placed a cross close to where her son fell.

And fifty years after James Meaker’s death, Graham Alderson decided that his otherwise anonymous roadside crash location also deserved to be remembered.

Without people making those individual decisions, we could walk through these peaceful places today without any idea of what happened here.

Want to visit these memorials yourself? I’ve marked all four locations on my Sussex Photography Public Map, making these easily missed pieces of Battle of Britain history easier to find.

That is one of the things I increasingly find fascinating about exploring and photographing the Sussex landscape. What appears to be an ordinary field, woodland, roadside or old oak tree can contain a story that completely changes the way you see it.

The High Weald did not merely sit beneath the Battle of Britain.

For a few extraordinary months in 1940, this landscape was part of the battlefield.

And the four small memorials that remain allow us, for a moment, to look upwards and remember what happened in the skies above.

For another poignant example of wartime history preserved within the East Sussex landscape, see my story of The Airman’s Grave on Ashdown Forest, where six Wellington bomber crewmen were killed the following year.