FAMOUS SQUADRON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1941, Page 6

FAMOUS SQUADRON

OF COASTAL COMMAND NEW ZEALANDER BEST MAN PILOT OFFICER E. W. TACON. RECORD OF GREAT SKILL & DARING. lEv Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.40 a.m.) LONDON, December 7. The Air Ministry news service says a R.A.F. squadron dubbed “The Demons,- ’ the personnel of wftich are mostly Canadians, with a sprinkling of tough young Americans, is building up a record for bombed ships that is becoming the envy of other Coastal Command squadrons. “But,” it is added, “ask any man in the squadron for the name of their best flyer and you will get the same answer —a New Zealander, Pilot Officer Ernest William Tacon, D.F.C., formerly of Hastings, Hawke’s Bay. A man who has flown for many hours with Pilot Officer Tacon says it is grand to see the way he handles his Lockheed Hudson, almost as though it were a fighter. Pilot Officer Tacon cn one occasion volunteered for a job from which he was not expected to return. The Navy wanted to bombard Stavanger, in Norway, and ask'ed the Coastal Command for a volunteer spotter plane. Pilot Officer Tacon went. On another occasion, when his squadron bombed Hamburg, Pilot Officei Tacon flew his plane under telegraph wires and also under high tension cables across the Elbe. Another time he attacked a cruiser off the . enemy coast, after which he coaxed his plane home with one dead engine. Pilot Officer Tacon is now instructing young pilots in his squadron.”