“THESE LITTLE TROUBLES”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 November 1940, Page 7

“THESE LITTLE TROUBLES”

WAIRARAPA AIRMAN'S EXPERIENCE. A Wairarapa airman, writing from England, says: — “So far I have been lucky with my aircraft to escape a bad accident. One motor had been giving trouble after it had failed on me on take-off with over-full load. I got away with it, which seemed to astonish everybody. Brought it safely back to deck on one engine and found myself shaking like a leaf. It was the first time I had been really scared since I first got in an aeroplane. When you realise those bombs go off in a crash landing, I suppose I had reason to be shaken a bit. They checked it over and I took it up and tested it thoroughly in the air and reckoned it O.K. My next trip was night and I was just leaving the deck when it cut dead again. Landed again without any trouble, and obtained another machine, having grown a little tired of that one. Well. I took it up and came in and landed all very nice till a tire burst and up we went on our nose —shaky do. She didn't stay there, but came thump down again and nearly brained the poor old reargunner. Altogether I am most unlucky. yet the luckiest blighter going. •'The crew are beginning to wonder what is next in store for us. They're brave chaps, these crews, they have to sit and take what the mug in the pilot's seal can make out of it. They have my greatest sympathy. "Still, when you come through'these little troubles, you do derive a kind of new confidence.”