ALERT BRITONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 246, 16 September 1940, Page 8

ALERT BRITONS.

PILOT’S EXPERIENCE,

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 14. The watchfulness of British people to prevent enemy pilots who have been shot down and descend over the country by parachute from escaping is well shown in a story told not without humour by an R.A.F’. pilot who had to bale out because of liis oxygen apparatus catching fire. “X came down rather too quickly and landed heavily in a potato field, somewhat winded,” he said.: “I had hurt my legs and back,, hut hot seriously. Before 1 could get up half a dozen land'girls came running,--up with, sticks, spade, hoe and. pitchfork.- I’called out, ‘Hello, girls. Help me out of my brolly, will you?” Realising that I was British, they dropped their weapons to see if they could get a car or an ambulance. Suddenly they dived for their sticks again, yelling, ‘Hold off.’ I looked round to see them running at a Home Guard who was stalking me with his rifle to his shoulder.” The circumstances in which a German bomber burst into flames and crashed during a raid last night is described in an Air Ministry bulletin. A British fighter was over London by moonlight when the pilot saw searchlights concentrating on a point several miles north. A Heinkel 111 was -held in their beams. For 20 minutes the fighter pilot chased the enemy. Though some of the searchlights had lost the enemy three or four still held him. When the fighter opened fire the - Heinkel dropped its bombs to lighten its load, and at the same time bullets from the Heinkel’s rear guns hit the fighter’s windscreen and wing. But the fighter’s bullets had struck home, and the Heinkel dropped flaming out of the sky and, following it down, the fighter pilot saw an explosion when it crashed.