RAMMING ATTACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1941, Page 5

RAMMING ATTACK

DEVELOPED BY RUSSIAN AIRMEN

LEAD GIVEN IN WAR OF 1914.

SOME ASTONISHING EXPLOITS

LONDON, October 6. A description of the technique of ramming in air combats, which has been developed by Soviet airmen, was given in a broadcast today by a Russian aviator.

In 1914, he said, a pilot of the Imperial Russian Air Force engaged an Austrian airman. He had often told his comrades that he thought that the ramming method of attack could safely be carried out.

In this engagement the Russian pilot put his plan into action. He brought off the collision, but had miscalculated the effect of the shock, lost control of his damaged aircraft, crashed and was killed.

The idea for which this brave pilot paid with his life in 1914 had never been forgotten by Russian airmen, and they had now developed the technique to such an extent that of 130 known encounters of this type in the present aerial combat on the Eastern Front, only four Russian airmen had lost their lives.

As one instance of such combat, the speaker said a pilot taking part in a recent aerial battle had just shot down a Nazi plane when another appeared in a suitable position for ramming. He drove his machine at the enemy plane and contacted its tail with one of his own wings. This was the system of ramming that had been developed, and Soviet airmen had been confident that the stroke could be carried out without mortal damage to the attacker. In this particular case the German plane dived out of control to a crash, while the Soviet plane, slightly damaged .in the wing, remained entirely under control. So much so that when the pilot sighted a third German plane he first opened the door of the cockpit and loosened the safety straps. He was then able to hurl his machine at the German. Both were smashed to pieces, but the Russian pilot was only

slightly injured, and was able to land by parachute.

Such daring, the speaker said, was sometimes performed in cold blood, and sometimes in the excitement of the battle. But there were many Russian pilots who looked upon it as a duty.