LONG DESCENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1940, Page 6

LONG DESCENT

BRITISH FIGHTER PILOT’S STORY ESCAPE FROM BURNING SPITFIRE. WOUND STAUNCHED IN MID-AIR. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.2 p.m. RUGBY. December 26. A thrilling story of a parachute escape from a Spitfire was told by a sergeant pilot who is a member of the first R.A.F. fighter squadron to have shot down one” hundred aircraft while operating from one station. “We had attacked a formation of Messerschmitt 109's at about lunch time, one day,” the sergeant pilot said. “We peeled off down to about 2000 feet, one after another and made our attacks. Then there was a dogfight and I was hit by a cannon shell as I was about to set on a Messerschmitt below me. Immediately my Spitfire went into a steep dive and flames appeared all round, so I threw the hood back and kicked myself out of the machine. I had been hit in the leg, and fainted almost immediately. I came to pretty soon afterwards, and found I was falling fast. I was very comfortable, but at 14,000 or so pulled the parachute rip cord. Then, when coming down slowly, I took my wireless lead, which was still attached, and tied it tight round my leg to staunch the flow of blood. Then I realised that my tunic was on fire, so I beat out the flames with my hands. I singed my moustache too.

“A Spitfire from another squadron came round me and gave me protection from machine-gunning by enemy fighters, but no enemy appeared. 1 thought once, when coming down, that I was going to hit telegraph wires or a high tension cable, but I missed them both and landed in an orchard. My aircraft crashed about three miles from my home in Kent, and when my parents came to see me in hospital on the following day they told me they had watched me coming down, although at the time not knowing who it was."