Editing Littleport (section)

==World War II==
On 16 December 1944, British double agent [[Eddie Chapman]] was flown on a mission to Britain by the Germans in a fast and manoeuvrable small fighter plane, that took off from a forward Luftwaffe fighter station on the Dutch coast. The purpose of the mission was to monitor the accuracy of [[V-1 flying bomb]]s and [[V-2 rocket]]s falling on London and then to report back their effect on the morale of the population in order to improve the performance and devastation of the attacks. After following the bombs to London, Chapman's fighter rerouted to East Anglia to enable him to bail out over flat ground.

The fighter had been converted for parachuting by cutting a small trap door in the floor. The low-flying fighter was picked up by a British night-fighter and attacked over the dropping zone. Chapman scrambled head first through the trap door, with his parachute initially getting stuck. Whilst floating down to the ground he witnessed the British night-fighter re-engage the German fighter, which burst into flames and exploded in a fireball as it hit the ground killing the remaining crew. Chapman landed near Apes Hall, Littleport, in the middle of the night. He woke the farm foreman George Convine by banging on the hall door. To avoid difficult questions, Corvine was told by Chapman that he was a crashed British airman and that he needed him to call the police.