NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN
SERVICE IN MIDDLE EAST SERGEANT PILOT’S FINE RECORD. PART TAKEN IN 42 BOMBING RAIDS. (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) (Special P.A. Correspondent.) LONDON, May 27. Flight Sergeant C. A. Armstrong, of Devonport, recently awarded the D.F.M., has returned to England from Malta, where he carried out 42 raids. Squadron Leader F. J. Steel, D.F.C., Napier, Pilot Officer G. H. Easton, Christchurch, and Flight Sergeant K. K. Coleman, Blenheim, were in the same squadron. Squadron Leader Steel has now gone to India. Pilot Officer Easton is flying with the British Overseas Airways Corporation in the Middle East. Sergeant Coleman is in England. Sergeant Armstrong said: “I was posted to a Wellington bomber squadron in May, 1941, and arrived in Malta in October. I liked the look of the place and so applied to stay, which was granted. I had carried out two raids when by old squadron arrived and I got transferred. I did 34 raids as captain, bombing Tripoli 14 times, Naples eight times and Benghazi on four occasions, as well as Taranto, Brindisi, Misurate, Sicily and Patras. I also took part in the bombing of four convoys in the Mediterranean. The raid on Patras was the most exciting and most difficult of all. Our target was shipping in the funnel-shaped harbour, which is difficult to approach, for hills rise almost sheer for 4,000 feet behind the town. Anti-aircraft gunners, placed 2,000 feet up in the hills, shelled us while we dived under a cloud base. At 2,500 feet we had to look lively to dodge flak and avoid hitting the mistshrouded hills. We had an interesting time bombing Misurate, when the British were approaching Benghazi. It was a beautiful night. We started big fires and shot up road transport of which there was plenty. A piece of incendiary flak entered the aircraft, but the navigator picked it up in a handkerchief and threw it out. We had an interesting time at Malta during the first two months, but the raids altered things. Malta was bombed sixty times during Christmas week. I was lucky to escape when a 500-pounder landed fifty yards away while I was working on an aircraft, preparing for a raid that night. I was two months in Suez and then came to England, meeting Terence Barton, an Auckland civil servant, on the way. He gave me a wonderful time.” Sergeant Armstrong has applied to go to the United States as an instructor.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 May 1942, Page 3
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409NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 May 1942, Page 3
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