AIR BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 August 1941, Page 5

AIR BATTLES

DEEDS OF AUSTRALIAN PILOTS.

STORY OF REMARKABLE ADVENTURE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. August 21. The Australian High Commissioner has heard several thrilling stories from the pilots of one of the first Australian fighter squadrons to operate from Britain. One sergeant pilot told how a few days ago he had taken part in an offensive sweep, and on the way back from France spotted a Messerschmitt 109, which was easy meat to him. He gave the German a few seconds’ cannon and machine-gun fire, and then heard a comrade warning him over the radio telephone that there were three enemy planes diving on his tail. “I went into a steep left-hand turn, and managed to get inside the Germans,” he said, “but one of them was coming head on at me. I can hardly remember pressing the gun button,' but to my horror the German came straight toward my Spitfire. I must have killed him with about the first shot, and his Messerschmitt passed about three feet over my head before it crashed.” When he landed safely at his base this pilot found that there was only one bullet hole in his aircraft —on a wingtip.

In little more than throe weeks this squadron has destroyed 13 German fighters, and there are three probables on the list. They have lost five machines.