TIMELY AID

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1943, Page 4

TIMELY AID

FOR NEW ZEALAND FIGHTER

SQUADRON ATTACKED BY LARGE NAZI CONCENTRATION. RECORDS OF SOME INDIVIDUAL AIRMEN. (Special P.A. Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 23. The New Zealand Spitfire squadron met a large concentration of FockeWulf 190 s, while escorting American Air Force medium bombers, attacking the Beaumont Le Roger airfield on Sunday. The Focke Wulfs made a head-on attack on the New Zealanders, .but Fighting French airmen, who were above, swung down behind the Germans, shooting down two, A Polish wing shot down three more and a Canadian squadron leader got one. The New Zealanders suffered some losses. Pilot Officer J. B. Small, of Lower Hutt.' has completed a tour in Lancasters. He bombed Essen four times and also went to Wilhelmshafen. Hamburg, Stuttgart and Stettin. His aircraft was badly hit by flak over Wuppertal, while incendiaries from an aircraft went through his port wing, smashing the outer petrol tank, as a result of which he landed with only a few gallons to spare. He was attacked by night fighters and twice he had three inches of ice form on his windscreen during one Essen raid, while once, when landing at a base, he saw bombs and flares from a German aircraft attacking a target a few miles away. . . Sergeant W. M. Gordon, of Christchurch, who has flown 271 operational hours and trained in a No. 1 course in the Empire Air Training Scheme, went five times to Essen and Bremen. Once a piece of shrapnel hit his parachute harness. It struck a buckle, however, which saved his life.