CRASH IN FLAMES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 September 1942, Page 2

CRASH IN FLAMES

NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN SURVIVE HAIR-RAISING EXPERIENCE IN EGYPT. LIBYAN AND OTHER FIGHTING. (Special P.A. Correspondent.) LONDON, September 24. Wearing a small winged boot badge indicating that he had been shot down and then returned to his own lines. Pilot Officer I. G. Medwin, of Hamilton, has returned to England from Egypt. He was shot down during June when the Germans were advancing toward Mersa Matruh. Medwin said: “Our plane was low-level bombing and strafing at night. We were giving it to, a German column and had just pulled out when a Messerschmitt got on to our tail and raked us with cannons and bullets, hitting the port motor, wing and fuselage and setting fire to the aircraft. I had a bad moment when I looked round and saw the kite ablaze. I thought it was the end, because we were too low to bale out while unable to return to the base. Despite the dark we managed to pick out a likely looking spot and then crash-landed in flames. My second pilot was K. Andrews and the observer T. Dixon, both of Auckland and flight sergeants. I managed to get the plane, down, but Andrews was badly injured. He managed to keep walking. We had to keep a sharp lookout for German columns. “We had no food or water. After five hours we ran into boys of the King’s Own Regiment, who wire mine-laying. They took us by lorry to Mersa Matruh. Andrews was like a man possessed, the way he kept on walking despite his injury. He would, sometimes stagger and fall, but so long as we kept him on his feet he kept going. He was getting on all right in hospital the last I heard, while Dixon and I recovered after seven days.” Medwin carried out 33 operations and was shot up eight times, including five times over Benghazi while mine-laying. A Breda shell once went through the hood between the two pilots, miraculously missing both. A North Canterbury warrant officer, W. Bruce Heney, saw Medwin shot down. “I saw the plane in flames,” he said, “but did not realise whose it was till next morning when I found Medwin’s tent empty.” Heney carried out 40 operations, many of them when Med,win was operating. They were in raids on Rhodes, Greece, Crete and Libya. An Aucklander, Sergeant Pilot L. G. Moors, also returned. He carried out 40 raids, including 13 in succession against Benghazi. Squadron Leader D. Carlson, D.F.C., of the Waikato, shared with a Rhodesian sergeant pilot his squadron’s first victory when he shot down a Focke-Wulf 190. “We were escorting Hurricane bombers which were attacking St. Omer when I spotted two enemy planes coming head-on slightly above,” he said. “We pulled up our nose and had a burst at the nearer one. I saw flames spurt from the cockpit and the engine, after which another pilot saw it spiral down in flames.” Squadron Leader Carlson’s squadron took part in the Dieppe raid. “We were unlucky in not seeing many enemy planes,” he said. “We did spot one Dornier 117. Nine of us fired at it, after which it crashed.”