TACKLED A DORNIER

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 264, 6 August 1942, Page 6

TACKLED A DORNIER

LONDON, August 4. The Air Ministry announces that Squadron Leader T. B. Fitzgerald, D.F.C., .South Canterbury, at present detached from the Fighter Command as a test fiilot with the Hawker Aircraft Company, makers of the Hurricane, was the hero of one of the war’s most unusual interceptions. Piloting an old Hurricane used in the Battle of Britain, Squadron Leader Fitzgerald was on a business and test flight over the East Midlands on Monday when, from thick mist and cloud, came the whine of bullets from a Dornier 217. Squadron Leader Fitzgerald said: I got a terrific shock. I was just stooging along as in peacetime at 200 feet and the Dornier was above me. 1 climbed to 500 feet. “The machineguns had not been used for a long time, but I got in a burst with eight guns nt 200 yards, and hit the Dornier on the port wing. He climbed toward the clouds without returning my fire. I followed and got in a second burst at 400 yards. I should think this was the first time that a Hun had been damaged by a test plane.” Squadron Leader Fitzgerald, who is 45 years old and six feet tall, went to Britain in 1938. He was awarded the D.F.C. in May, 1940, at the Battle of Sedan, when he was a bomber pilot.