STRUCK ENEMY MAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 March 1942, Page 4

STRUCK ENEMY MAST

SPLINTERS IN BOMB-DOORS. PILOT DIVED TOO LOW. One of the pilots of a Lockheed Hudson squadron of the Coastal Command carries in his packet-book dozens of small pinewood splinters, states a London exchange. They are pieces of a German ship’s mast, and they tell a story of a very daring attack. Often, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, the pilot is over the Norwegian coast. And in his Hudson is a load of heavy bombs vzhich, because they have a delayed action, allow him to go down low to make sure of dumping the bombs on the ship’s deck. One moonlit night recently the pilot —a young flying-officer—went almost too low. He saw a 4500-ton ship in a fiord and went in at once to attack. He dived through a hail of anti-air-craft fire, and it was only when he was below mast height that he pulled up steeply to avoid crashing on the ship’s deck. As he swept over the vessel he unloaded his bombs and scored a hit. It was not till he got back to his base and was examining the Hudson for bullet and shrapnel holes that he found splinters from the mast. They were embedded in the bomb doors, which had scraped the mast as the Hudson flew over. So intent was the pilot on dropping his bombs accurately that he did not feel the bump as the bomb-doors struck the mast.