New Zealander on Eagle When She Went Down

Manawatu Times, Volume 67, Issue 111, 4 September 1942, Page 4

New Zealander on Eagle When She Went Down

SUCCESSES AGAINST ITALIAN BOMBERS (Special Correspondent.) Received Thursday, 11 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 2. The only New Zealander in the aircraft-carrier Eagle was SubLieutenant H. E. Duthie, of the Fleet Air Arm, who belongs to Epsom. He was 20 yards from the ship when she went down. He was wearing a Mae West lifejacket and swam for half an hour before being picked up by a destroyer. Sub-Lieut. Duthie said: "I had Just gone down to my cabin in order to pick up my gear because I was about to begin a flight when four torpedoes hit the ship almost simultaneously with terrific explosions. I remember my mirror breaking. Then I dashed up to the flight deck because the ship listed heavily almost immediately. “I waited for a while, noplng the ship was not going to sink, but the list continued so I began to slide down a rope on the ship’s high side Into a lifeboat, but the Eagle was swinging over so rapidly that the lifeboat was lifted up from the water. I Jumped into the sea. which wag oily but warm, and began swimming as quickly as possible, remembering the stories of suotion. But there was no suction and I saw two men step off from the > udder as the Eagle sank and swim away.” Sub-Lieut. Duthie was with the Eagle during a previous Malta-bound convoy when he was credited with shooting down one and a-hair three-engined Savoi Machetti bomber* and probably another. "One morning two of us were patrolling when we saw two of these bombers. We got both, one going down in flames. I was with tne same pilot that evening when we saw seventeen Savoi Machettis flying in tight formation. We both attacked the rear air,craft and it went down flaming. The other pilot’s oiltank was hit so he left and I used up the rest of my ammunition firing at another bomber and I saw its starboard engine burst into flames. Enemy fighters then arrived so I left quickly.”