A MODEST PILOT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1940, Page 5

A MODEST PILOT

GOOD SHOW, BUT NOT BIG OPERATION WELL PREPARED. LESSONS OF SECURITY PATROLS. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. LONDON, March 22. Details of the great adventure of the raid on Sylt were given with almost casual modesty in a broadcast, today by one of the pilots who took part. “It was not a big show as shows go." he said, "but it was a good show.'' When the orders for the raid came they were orders for which the men had been waiting.’he said. After their long periods of practice on the security patrols over the German islands they felt the time had come when they could put into practice what they had learnt.

The security patrols he described as monotonous. Not that they were not worth while, for so long as any British aircraft were in the vicinity it was too dangerous for the Germans to show the necessary flares for the guidance of their mine-laying seaplanes, or lights of any kind. Every time the R.A.F. had been there, he thought, they would have liked to "take a crack” at the Germans.

At last came the time when they were going to get some of their own back. The weather was the best they had yet experienced on these flights. They took off in moonlight, but for .45 minutes had to fly in low cloud and for another .30 through showers before the cloud lifted and visibility became reasonable. “The Germans, no doubt, thought it was the usual security patrol and that we had no intention of being any ruder than we had been before." he said. He described how. arriving at the island before the time fixed for the raid to begin, they flew about it till the time for attack came, when they climbed to operational height. Then they approached a seaplane slipway and dived to the attack. Bombs were released, the aimer seeing a hit recorded on the target, and then the machine changed course and headed for the sea. The anti-aircraft barrage, he said, was fairly intensive, but neither very accurate nor effective, though they felt the concussion of some of the bursts.