WINGS OVER LIBYA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1941, Page 2

WINGS OVER LIBYA

CONSTANT “HOT PARTIES” SHARE OF NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN. EXACTING AND PERILOUS SERVICE. (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service). CAIRO, October 6. In Libya successful attacks were made by bombers of the Royal Air Force. ... Terse and now happily quite commonplace, the above statement is a j. cheerful reminder that the boys of the j Air Force are succeeding in making c the Cyrenaician coast very unpleasant for Germans and Italians alike. To £ New Zealanders there is yet another interest. Almost every time a squad- £ ron or so of bombers make those sue-, | cessful attacks, New Zealand pilots, j observers or air-gunners are mixed j up in it somewhere. There may be £ only two New Zealanders in a squad- * ron; often there are as many as half t a dozen, as in the case of the ’drome j to which two certain sergeant-observ- { ers belonged. £ One of them was from Auckland, j the other from Hamilton. In their ( squadron, hidden away near a desert , escarpment, there were four others j who had joined the R.N.Z.A.F. and ; were now hammering enemy bases, j supply columns and harbours. They were just a little “browned-off,” which . as every soldier and airman knows is a curt but expressive way of saying ' that a short change of environment 1 would be very desirable. ■ Enjoying an 1 only too brief leave in Cairo, they < were determined to make the most of < it. 1 PLACES OF “INTEREST.” 1 Those two young New Zealanders ] had been in, or rather over, some I interesting places, if one can appreci- 1 ate the “interest” in several square : miles of night sky alive with bursting J shrapnel and tracer bullets. Down below there might be several thousand J people to whom the steady roar of ' the British bombers is certainly a ’ matter of considerable interest—and anxiety—as when the two sergeants ! took part in one of a series of raids J on Benghazi. ’ It was the fourth successive night • that British planes had given this • important enemy coastal base a taste of the R.A.F.’s growing striking pow- ■ er. The fourth night meant a “hot party” because the enemy were all ready waiting for them coming. After three nights’ bombing they had decided that it was quite probable that the British might just be inclined to drop in again. The target was a supply ship bobbing jauntily in the outer harbour, at least that was the target which was the immediate concern of the two New Zealanders. The raiders had come straight across from the desert. As they swooped over the town to circle above the harbour, they ran' into a hail of “flack.” “We could see the stuff bursting before, behind and all round us —black puffs which you could see quite plainly in the moonlight,” said one of the sergeants. “The . marvel is that nothing touched us.” “THEY GOT THEIR TARGET.” They got their target. It sounds very easy, perhaps, to hear about an airman flying over a tanker and dropping a stick of bombs amidships. Out at sea, it is certainly not particularly difficult, although the chances are that a stray piece of flack may make | the destruction mutual. But when the I target is a supply-ship or tanker rid- ' ing at anchor in a protected harbour, | it is an entirely different proposition, i It more often than not means some fairly effective cross-fire, and to the i man in the plane, diving with a sudl den, mighty, roaring, swish straight ' between two masts, cross-fire makes a I particularly unpleasant sparring part- | ner, especially when a thousand and I one searchlights seem to be pinning I him to the sky. | “We got out of it safely enough,” | said one of the New Zealanders, “and I think that ship would not do much I more sailing.” Another trip they had done was ! over Derna, while not many months | ago, when Crete was in the news, they had the experience of bombing the Germans on Maleme ’drome. I “There were a hell of a lot of ‘kites’ I down there,” one of them said. “It I was just like a circus. Even though it was at night we could see them plainly. There were hundreds of them.” They went straight to work on that occasion and left a good number of the German planes in flames. PLACES TO AVOID. But it is out over the desert, when the wind is rising and the sand begins to sweep in circles, that the real

difficulties are met. The best thing to do on these occasions is make for the coast and then slip quietly down on the next friendly drome along the coast. There are some of these friendly places where they are inclined to be suspicious of such visits. For a British plane to mistake its course and find itself over Tobruk, for example, is just asking for trouble, and the stuff they send up from Tobruk, according to one of the New Zealanders who once had the misfortune to experience, it is like a hailstorm turned upside down. Other rightfully suspicious people are the men of the Navy. To them a plane is a plane, and as such is capable of dropping bombs or doing nasty things with machine-guns. So they take no chances, and the AirForce boys do not blame them. They, just keep a respectful distance till they have fully established their bona fides. WATCHING BOMBS DROP. The New Zealanders consider that watching a stick of bombs drop towards tl\e target is really a queerer sensation than watching the “flack” come up towards them. One of them recalled a raid he had once been with over- a desert aerodrome. The flares were glowing when they arrived and they could pick out the planes squatting like silver flies on a burnished tray. The New Zealand observer was keeping one eye on the - instruments and the other on the spot where he hoped the stick would fall. At' the right moment he pulled across the “mickey-mouse,” or hand lever which releases the bombs. The experience at that time was still novel to him, and he took more than usual interest in the missiles’ flight. “They seemed suddenly to flatten out as they left the plane,” he said. “They were travelling so slowly that they hardly seemed to move. Then you could see them gaining speed and moving forward with the “kite.” As they reached the ground they seemed to swoop right over- the target. It looked like a bad miss, but actually they hit the target right in the centre.”

TRAINING AND SERVICE. One of the New Zealanders, having completed his operational training course, was assigned to take part in two sea sweeps, one over the Channel off the France-Belgian coast, and the other just off Denmark. Both were made in daylight, and both were uneventful. The other New Zealander joined the squadron when he arrived here from New Zealand. been out on big raids, not to mention innumerable patrols over desert and road. The four other New Zealanders on the station hailed from Auckland, Hawera, Thames and Te Awamutu. Sometimes they ran into isolated groups of New Zealand soldiers doing a specialised job out in the blue, such as at one place where a couple of engineers were operating a branch railway system, with nobody near them for miles. “It is good to meet some of the boys,”, they say. “When we are in Cairo we always drop in at the New. Zealand Club and are sure to meet somebody we know.” But they are not in Cairo too often, or anywhere else except out over the desert, quietly doing a real job of work. In the “gen” room where all information is posted, they may find that they have something particularly tough to do before they can settle down for a night’s rest. It may be merely annoying a convoy crawling cautiously up from the enemy base; on the other hand it may be a big show, where the chances of coming back are less even than anyone would ever state. But there is a real feeling of satisfaction, they say, in being able to strike at the enemy when he least expects it and where he feels it most.