SUPERB HEROISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1943, Page 3

SUPERB HEROISM

OF COASTAL COMMAND AIRMEN IN WAR AGAINST U-BOATS. BACKGROUND OF THE EXPLOIT OF TRIGG, V.C. (Special P.A. Correspondent.) (Received This Day, 9.25 a.m.) LONDON, November 3. Flying Officer L. A. Trigg’s Victoria Cross is the first to be awarded any airman in the Coastal Command. Behind the award lies another story of the superb heroism of many men who deliberately fling themselves into suicide attacks against U-boats. The “Daily Mail’s” air correspondent says it is the record of a new phase of the U-boat war —of men who know their machines, in the grim jargon of this war, are “expendable.” For months the air struggle against the U-boats was largely a matter of science. , Mastery was being won slowly but surely, not so much by individual exploits, but by the great Coastal Command Fleet working as a whole. Then the battle took a sudden, dramatic turn. The U-boats made a new and desperate bid for survival. They began to travel in packs, carrying powerful anti-aircraft guns. They massed together on the surface when intercepted, instead of diving, and put up such a curtain of fire that it became virtually impossible for aircraft to attack them without being hit. At that point the whole nature of the battle changed. Success became completely dependent on individual air crews. Either they displayed heroism of a high order, or the whole weight of the science and force employed would collapse. Their task was now “to fly down the barrels of the U-boat guns,” and the Coastal Command crews accepted in full the German challenge. Curiously enough, a majority of the crews making these attacks survived, although their aircraft have been shot to pieces. All the newspapers give prominence to Flying Officer Trigg’s exploit.