Nash was made an Official War Artist to the Royal Air Force in 1940. He made many studies of planes and wrecked enemy aircraft, although he was not allowed to fly himself because of health problems. His art of the period is a vivid re-interpretation of the scenes he witnessed.

For Nash, the protagonists of the war were not men but machines. Here the crashed German plane jars against the landscape, accentuated by the strange shadows. Windsor was a deeply symbolic location, given the presence of the castle: a royal residence and the adopted surname of the royal family itself.