AN EX-LUFTWAFFE pilot has come to Cleveland with a message of reconciliation.

Former German wartime bomber pilot Heinz Mollenbrok, 80, told air cadets at Redcar that the key to the future was friendship and cooperation with other countries.

The pensioner forged links with the area following the discovery a couple of years ago of the wreckage of a downed Dornier bomber at South Bank - and in it, the remains of one of the air crew, gunner Heinrich Richter.

The retired farmer attended Herr Richter's funeral at Thornaby Cemetery, which he recalled this week as a "unique and wonderful act of reconciliation."

The two Germans had served in the same flight group based in Holland. Heinz was shot down while carrying out bombing raids on Battle of Britain airfields in the South-East in August 1940.

He has kept in touch with the family who tended to his wounds and has now hunted down the Hurricane pilot, Taffy Higginson, who shot him down.

The gesture has won him a VIP place at this month's Royal International Air Tattoo to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Herr Mollenbrok is taking as his guest his friend, wartime aviation historian Bill Norman from Guisborough.

Bill said: "I have the highest regard for him because he is reaching out across the sea to former adversaries. It is his mission to establish reconciliation between Britons and Germans."