FLYING LATEST FIGHTERS

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 247, 20 October 1942, Page 6

FLYING LATEST FIGHTERS

SQUADRON LED BY NEW ZEALANDER.

P.A. Gable.

LONDON, Oct. 17,

Five New Zealanders who are flying and flghting together from a famous R.A.F. aerodrome near London are Squadron Leader J. R. C. Kilian, Christchurch, Flight Lieutenant L. P. Griffith, D.F.C., Levin, Pilot Offlcer D. A. Piggott, Auckland, Sergeant Pilots W. W. Peet, Dannevirke, and F. E. Livesey, Christchurch. Kilian, an old Christ's College >boy, commands a squadron which is flying one of the latest types of fighter aircraft. He has been in the United Kingdom about a year, in which he achieved his present rank. He was playing cards with the rest of the boys "on readiness" when seen. He has a lively, tousy squadron, in which British,' New Zealanders and C'anadians are teaming splendidly. Kilian is one of the quietest men on the station, but is officially credited with one plane destroyed and one probable. He also shared the destruction of a second. Griffith, who is at present undergoing specialised gunnery instruction from Wing Oommander A. G. Malan, the R.A.F. top-scorer with 35 enemy planes, has two probables and four damaged to his credit. The others are shaping weil.