AERIAL COMBAT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 240, 20 November 1940, Page 3

AERIAL COMBAT

EYE WITNESS COMPLAINS OF SPEED MUCH OF THE PICTURE MISSED Writing in "Country Life" on the ■credibility of the daily reportsi on the great numbers of enemy aircraft brought down, as against comparatively small British losses, Major Jarvis gives the following interesting impression of how air raids are viewed in his village: "So far as our part of the world is concerned, we obtain ocular demonstration of the vast superiority of our machines constantly, but the only trouble is that in these days of 300 to 40=0 m.p.li. it is difficult to see. all the stages of an aerial combat. £V Last war" complained our roadman, 'we got a bit of excitement in the trenches, as we saw the fight from the first round to the knockout, and we all of us got quitt| expert in knowing what our chaps were going to do. Nowadays witli these modern machines, you want a front seat in at least three counties at the same time if you are going to see it from beginning to end.' "Last week, when there were some light fine weather clouds floating about in a clear evening sky, our airmen were-more obliging, and I came across a party of timber-men watching, a series of fights from their stance on a lofty pile of pine logs. " 'He'll get that fellow all right!' someone shouted. "Lool\! He's coming right down on his tail Hear the machine guns now!' "There was a faint stuttering of. fire from the northern horizon .and then a long drawn 'Aaaaah' from the. crowd —the sound one heard in other days when a rocket at a firework display came to earth in a shower of Sparks—and a light grey German 'plane shot downwards until it disappeared behind fi belt of trees. " 'Got him!' roared the crowd. 'Down and out. Look, there s out chap going over him to check up* as the tiny British machine swopped downwards over the spot. Then as a dense column of black smoke went drifting away to the eastwards the little Spitfire zoomed up again, "He's after another now—good bov. Look!' "A second German machine appeared overhead speeding south- 1 wards, and roaring behind him and overtaking him as if he Avere standing still, came the British machine, black against the evening sky. 'Damn it, the swine will be in that cloud before our chap gets on his tail. No he won't. Yes he will. Hard luck—they ought to have what you might call a forward gun to stop anything breaking cover ahead. And, by God, they have—there's another of ours in front of him. There go the guns again. Aaah'.'i— j and coming down in irregular spirals with smoke pouring from its tail, came a second Junkers bomber. (|t 'Not bad for ten minutes/ said the commentator laconically, 'and if I'm not mistaken they got a third one while we were watching the second scrap. Now I'm going home to supper, and I'll sleep sound and contented to-night.' "