Book review: Luftwaffe Eagles Over Ireland - The Story of German Air Crashes over Neutral Ireland 1940-1945 by Justin Horgan and Paddy Cummins

German airmen who crashed in Ireland during the Second World War and survived were interned here, becoming objects of great curiosity among local people who encountered them, as Ryle Dwyer discovers.     

People living in the southern coastal counties from Kerry to Wexford, had frequent reminders of the Second World War with warplanes making forced landings, or bodies being washed up on our shores. The survivors of aircraft that landed were great curiosities.

All of the German airmen were interned, as were some of the Allied airmen, for a time at least, but all of the Allied airmen were secretly released between October 1943 and June 1944.