GALLANT PILOT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 229, 26 September 1940, Page 7

GALLANT PILOT.

AUSTRALIAN D.F.C. Makes Crash Landing To Avoid Endangering Village. British Official Wireless. (Reed. 10 a.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 25. How a- Royal Air Force pilot chose to make a crash landing, involving great risk to himself, rather than abandon his machine and so endanger residents of a Kentish market town in which his aircraft probably would have crashed, is told in the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to an airman from Edwardstown, South Australia. During an attack on German bombers, this officer, W. H. Millington, damaged a Dornier, but found himself engaged by three Messerschmitts. He damaged one of these, shook off the others, and returned to attack the bombers. In a further attack on him by two Messerschmitts, he brought down one, but a cannon shell from the other hit his engine, causing his aeroplane' to catch fire. Realising the danger to the village toward which he was flying, should he jump and leave an uncontrolled, blazing machine, he kept in his place and landed in a field. The petrol tanks burst just after "the gallant pilot got clear of his machine. < Local people showed an instant appreciation of Pilot-Officer Millington's gallantry by starting a "Eighter Fund." They had seen the Hurricane coming down with flames darting from it, and no sooner had it landed south of the town, states an Air Ministry bulletin, than the petrol tanks exploded. The pilot just scrambled to safety suffering from slight head injuries. The same afternoon, another fighter pilot — a equadion-leader who had destroyed one, and probably two, Messerschmitts 109 —landed near the same town by parachute with an injured foot and soaked with petrol. While the wound was dressed, police put the parachute on show and bega* collecting for the town's Spitfire Fund.

SAVING ST. PAUL'S. PRAISE FROM N.Z. OFFICERS. (Reed. 2 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 25. A number of New Zealand military officers have cabled to the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, Mr. W. J. Jordan, asking him to convey their conoratulatioris and admiration to Lieutenant Davies and the members ot his bomb disposal unit for their work in removing the bomb which threatened the fabric of St. Paul's Cathedral.