NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 February 1943, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND AIRMEN

DECORATIONS FOR GALLANT SERVICE. SQUADRON-LEADER ENSOR’S FINE RECORD. (Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February 15. To be a squadron leader with the D. and D.F.C. and bar at the age of 21 is the outstanding record of M. A.' Ensor. He is one of the very few New Zealand airmen to win this triple award —the only others of whom I have records at present are Wing Commanders Trevor Freeman, Dunedin, and E. P. Wells, Cambridge. Ensor has achieved this success in 12 months. It was just about a year ago, when he was a pilot officer, that the starboard engine of bis LockheedHudson struck a snow-capped rock while flying at 100 feet after hitting a German supply ship near Heligoland. He had to switch oil the engine and fly with one; moreover, he did not know that his gyro compass was damaged and 180 degrees out till he was flying over Holland. His aircraft ran into intense flak—“like somebody spraying red sparks at us from a giant hosepipe.” Then he flew through a snowstorm, landing eventually only 20 miles off his course. That night he won the D.F.C. award, which was announced on February 18, 1942. Ensor was awarded the bar last October. The citation laconically stated that he had completed numerous sorties, “including two well-executed attacks against U-boats.” Ensor, equally laconic, remarked, “Oil came from two, and we also think we got a third.” Ensor then took part in the North African landings, which he observed from the air. “There were dozens of U-boats around,” he said. He got one, but nearly blew up his aircraft after he had scored a direct hit with depthcharges. His Hudson shot up 300 ft. like a rocket. “When I had steadied the plane I found the rudders and elevators blown off, the ailerons damaged and about six feet of each wing-tip bent upward almost at right-angles,” he said. Then followed a nightmare trip to Algiers. Sometimes the nose dipped, whereat the crew had to run to the tail to balance the aircraft; then the tail would drop, and the crew would run back to the nose. The aircraft had finally reached Algiers Bay when the port engine cut out and all the crew had to bale .but. With Ens«r was Flight Lieutenant G. H. Holmes, Christchurch, who was awarded the D.F.C. Ensor won his D.S.O. on that flight to Algiers. It was his second most lucky escape, but certainly it was not all luck. His coolheadedness and quick-thinking both times saved him and his crew. Ensor is not the only young New Zealand airman to win distinction and rapid promotion —R. M. Trousdale, Howick ,and E. H. McHardy, Waipawa, who are little more than 21, are both wing commanders with the D.F.C. and bar—but few boys of Ensor’s age in the R.A.F. have been triply decorated. The latest awards recognise the outstanding services by New Zealanders in three different commands—Ensor in the Coastal, Wells in the Fighter, and Freeman in the Bomber Commamis. Squadron Leader R. J. C. fllrant, D.F.C., D.F.M., Auckland, commanding officer of the New Zealand Spitfire Squadron, and Flying Officer M. R. D. Hume, Wellington, each shot down a Focke-Wulf 190 during the raid on Boulogne on February 13. Grant has now shot down eight Germans, and the members of the New Zealand Spitfire Squadron have now accounted for over 40 enemy planes.