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Brighton & Hove Herald

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This Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane shot down over Shoreham on 13 August 1940 landed in a stubble field at New Salts Farm

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The Brighton & Hove Herald, although now defunct, was once a very popular local newspaper. At the start of the Second World War, it issued a postcard of a Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane that had been successfully shot down over Shoreham on August 13, 1940. The German pilot managed to crash land his plane safely in a stubble field and was uninjured. No doubt publication of the card helped to boost morale in Sussex during the grim days of the Battle of Britain. The caption on the back of the card avoided mentioning Shoreham by name, and the picture was doctored to prevent the location being recognised. It is not known whether the Brighton & Hove Herald issued any other wartime cards of downed planes, but military secrecy and printing restrictions could well have stifled any further initiatives.

Some years after peace returned, the Herald newspaper began publishing good quality real photographic cards of modern design showing Brighton and Hove, and also surrounding places such as Bramber, Poynings (viewed from the Devils Dyke), West Blatchington Mill, Shoreham, Rottingdean and Piddinghoe. A card with the prescient title "Sunset over the West Pier" now provides a sad reminder of the former splendour of this much loved Brighton landmark (see Gallery). Postmark evidence indicates that the first cards appeared by 1951 and some remained on sale until the late 1950s or early 1960s. Over 50 different cards are known to have been produced. All had the Brighton & Hove Herald logo on the back, and to its left most carried the simple printed message "Greetings from Brighton and Hove". A few cards, however, dispensed with this message, and were labelled "Beauty around our Borders, Series No. 1" or "Series No. 2". All the cards as far as is known had printed captions, except for a view of Patcham Church, which had a caption in facsimile handwriting.

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