ACTS OF GALLANTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 November 1939, Page 5

ACTS OF GALLANTRY

PERFORMED BY BRITISH AIRMEN HEROISM IN RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHTS. OBSERVER AND HIS WOUNDED COMRADE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) RUGBY, November 15. Many acts of gallantry have been performed by Royal Air Force reconnaissance crews. In the course of one raid on Germany. carried out for the greater part of the distance at an altitude where the temperature was 20 degrees below zero, an aircraft was hit by anti-air-craft fire while returning from its objective and an air gunner wounded. To reach him a N.C.O. observer found it necessary to discard his parachute harness, life-saving jacket and warm outer clothing to enable him to squeeze through a narrow opening inside the fuselage. Finding his companion badly wounded in the hand and thigh, he dressed the hand wound, but decided to leave the more serious thigh wound untouched, realising that the loosening of clothing would probably result in a dangerous loss of blood. Warming him with his body and encouraging him with reports of their progress, the observer remained with the wounded man till they were clear of Germany. He then returned to the front cockpit and attended to his navigation duties till his base was in sight, when he again made his way back to the wounded air gunner and stayed with him until they landed. Throughout the whole return flight from Germany the observer was without his flying clothes, in a temperature never above freezing point. The skill of our bomber pilots was shown on one occasion when a British aircraft was attacked at 24.000 feet by a Messerschmitt fighter. Using evasive action, the pilot eluded his opponent but lost his height so quickly in the process that he was soon down to a level where he was immediately engaged by intensive enemy anti-aircraft fire. While the anti-aircraft guns were firing, the German fighter held off till he was out of range. He then renewed the attack, but without success. The pilot of the British aircraft engaged on this occasion has been decorated for this and an earlier and still more daring reconnaissance flight from which he and his crew brought back information and photographs of outstanding importance.