The women who stole downed German airman's silk parachute to make knickerbockers Gefreiter Budde was captured the following day by the Home Guard and held as a prisoner of war after being treated for burns in a local hospital. The episode has now come to light after Christine Thorp, whose mother Irene Smith was one of the women involved, took an off-cut of the parachute to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow. Mrs Thorp, 72, said: "My mother died two years ago aged 95 but a few years before she gave me the piece of the parachute as she knew I was interested in the story behind it. She told me the villagers had seen this German bomber come down a couple of miles away and a handful of them, mainly women as the men were away at war or working on the farms, got together and decided to retrieve a parachute. They picked up whatever weapons they could lay their hands on like pitchforks and brooms for their own protection and walked two miles across the fields. When they got there and found the airman they found he was more scared of them. She said he must have thought he was going to be killed and ran off into the woods. They found his parachute and cut it up among themselves using the scissors. It was pure silk, very soft and fine material. Women who were married during the war often had to make their own wedding dresses out of a variety of matierels. They were quite resourceful. All the ladies in the village who wanted some silk got some but others would not touch it because it was German. Mother did make some underwear out of her cut but she also got a piece that had some German printing on. It was unusable but she decided to keep it. I have had it for about 20 years and have washed and ironed it and now keep it in a plastic cover in my wardrobe. It is about 5ft long and triangular in shape. Gefreiter Budde's Heinkel HE-III bomber was part of a large formation that attacked Birmingham on the night of May 10, 1941. This particular aircarft was tasked with breaking off from the main group in order to bomb a factory at Longbridge where Lancaster bombers were being made. The four-man crew were supposed to follow the Birmingham to Bristol railway line to direct them but chose the wrong tracks. Instead the plane ended up going towards Redditch and was shot at by anti-aircraft fire when it past RAF Wythall. It crashed in a field nearby Earlswood. The pilot, Oberlieutenant Johannes Speck von Steinberg, flight engineer Feldwebel Siegfried Ruhle, an Iron Cross winner, and observor Feldwebel Fritz Mohn were killed. The Earlswood Village Museum still has part of the wreckage of the Heinkel as well as Feldwebel Ruhle's Iron Cross that was found in the field weeks later. Val Tonks, the curator of the museum, said: "It has long been on record who the crew were, what their mission was and what happened to the survivor. But it was only about six months ago that I heard of this story of these women capturing the parachute. I came across another woman whose mother had run across the fields to claim her piece of the parachute. Of course, more recently, this second account came out and it is now clear that this was one of the most bizarre exchanges between British civilians and German airmen during the war. The three dead Germans are buried at Cannock Chase, Staffs, which is now a German war cemetrery. Gefreiter Budde was repatriated to Germany after the war. He died in 2003 aged in his 80s.