FIGHTING AIRMAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1941, Page 4

FIGHTING AIRMAN

« FORMER N.Z. BANK CLERK ADVENTURES IN WESTERN DESERT. SOME SPECTACULAR ESCAPES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY. June 15. A former bank clerk from New Zealand, now serving as a sergeant pilot in a famous fighter squadron 4 in the Western Desert, is in hospital after a series of spectacular escapes in the past two weeks. “In the first I found myself on a landing ground, with my aircraft destroyed," he said, “and some Germans, armed with tommy-guns, only half a mile away. I was got out of that by squeezing into the cockpit of a Hurricane with another pilot, who flew me 360 miles to safety. A day or two after my return, I was ground strafing an enemy landing ground, and had set fire to two German aircraft, when a couple of Bren-gun shells hit my radiator. Fumes came into the cockpit and two Messerschmitt 109 s were hot on my tail. One got a burst into my aircraft, and I began to lose altitude. The elevator control began to misbehave and I was flying along the top of some cliffs, trying to shake off the Germans, when I saw the outer defences of Tobruk. Just as safety seemed within reach, the aircraft flattened out into a field and burst into flames, which were licking round my legs before I could clamber out. I thought I was still in enemy territory and dragged myself to a cave, where I lay for hours. A party nf English troops, out on a skirmish, took me into Tobruk."