MET A TARTAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 September 1941, Page 6

MET A TARTAR

BIG GERMAN BOMBER DESTROYED IN ATTACK ON SMALL BRITISH TRAWLER, BULLETS FROM MACHINE-GUN GET HOME. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) RUGBY, September 25. The destruction of a German bomber by a fishing boat is officially revealed. A small fishing trawler was steaming along gently, with her trawl down, when out of the blue down roared a twin-en-gined Heinkel, cannon and mach-ine-guns blazing. Down came a couple of bombs, but they fell in the sea, hurling up columns of water half as high as the trawler’s mast. Again and yet a third time the Heinkel tore over the trawler, machinegunning from a height of only 150 feet, but the trawler did not take things lying down. She fought back with a defensive machine-gun. Smoke suddenly poured from one of the Heinkel’s engines and it dived steeply into the sea, throwing up a huge spout of spray as it hit the water. Unluckily for the Heinkel, concussion from the bombs which had narrowly missed had damaged the trawler's engines and it took two hours’ work to got them started again. Thus there was no chance of a search for possible survivors. The crew of the aircraft had signed their own death warrant. The trawler crawled slowly back to port with a wounded gunner and the results of her interrupted fishing.