CANADIAN’S ACTIVITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 251, 31 July 1940, Page 5

CANADIAN’S ACTIVITY.

WORK WITH ROYAL AIR FORCE.

THIRTY-FOURTH SORTIE MADE. (United Press Association—Copyright t LONDON, July 29. In a broadcast, a young Canadian pilot who lias served with a Royal Air Force bomber squadron since the beginning of the war, said: “My last raid —a few days ago—was my thirty-fourth sortie against the enemy, and it’s a rather remarkable thing that in all those operations my aircraft was bit only once. That was at Bergen, when we were after a couple of German cruisers. “A good many times I would have sworn the aircraft must have been absolutely riddled, the anti-aircraft fire was coming so close all round us, but when we got back there has not been a mark on it.

“On this 34th raid we managed to bring off quite a decent effort. Our target was at Hamburg. We got over the city all right, but there was a lot of low cloud about and we could not find our objective, so we went up to Wilbelmshaven. We were after the docks there. On the way to Wilhelmshaven we increased height. Then, when we had got close enough to reach it in a glide, I gradually closed the throttle and dropped. By this time we were pretty well on the target. We dived and let go the bombs. They sailed right across the corner of the largest dock.

“They put up a heavy anti-aircraft barrage, of course—down below - the tracer, then on top of that, bursting all over the place, the heavier stuff. When*it’s concentrated it shoots up at you as though it were coming out of the mouth of a volcano. But that was one of the 33 times we did not get liit.‘

“The barrage was piotty intense, hut to my mind a target like that it relatively easy compared with locating and attacking, say, a factory in the Ruhr. For one thing it’s bigger and stands out better, and for another, you get away out to the open sea when you have bombed, and you liar r e not got to cross a whole lot of enemy country. “A Pretty Good Pasting.” “Don't think I mean by that that we are at all shy about going into the Ruhr—they get a pretty good pasting there most nights ill the week. “On these trips it’s a grand ihing to know you have a good crow to back you up. I’ve boon lucky there. Right from the start I kept the same crew up to the time I left the squadron, except for the second pilot. He was with me until about five weeks ago, but then they made him captain of an aircraft with a crow of his own. He was a Canadian, too. He came from Calgary. “Of the crew of six, two were Canadians, two wore Scotsmen, and the other two wore Englishmen; so we were a pretty representative lot. One of the Scotsmen had such a strong accent that at times, until I got used to him, I could not understand what he was saying. The other one was not nearly so bad, so I used to get him to interpret.

“The first time we flew over enemy territory was back in the winter, when wc did leaflet .dropping. That seems ■a very long time ago now. In between the-re has been the Norwegian, business. Then followed the; invasion of the; Low Countries.

“We were operating there and after that we were working in direct support of the Allied land forces in an attempt to hold lip the German advance into France.

“Moret recently we have been concentrating on Germany itself. We have given them something to think about. There 14 no doubt about that. “During the operations over Franco we had what are/ probably our most spectacular efforts. We were attacking enemy depots and troop concentrations in the area round Hirson. We saw another of our bombers getting heavily fired; at from the woods., so we thought we had better have a. look, “Having spotted the machine-gun post where the fire was qoming from we silenced four of them. Then wo bit an ammunition store or a petrol dump with, a couple of bombs. That sent thei whole works up. Every now and then on the way back my windscreen was lit up b'y the light of another explosion and by the time the last went' off we were two miles away.”

ECONOMIC ORDER IN EUROPE. NAZI PLANS NOT LIKED. RUGBY, July 29. The exposition by the Nazi Minister for Economic Affairs (Dr. Funk) of schemes for a. new economic order in Europe have, not had a very favourable press comment in the countries whore comment is still free, according to the summaries reaching London. The Swiss newspaper “Democrat” says: “Many economists consider that driving Britain from Euvope and the construction of a separate European bloc would precipitate the haemorrhage of a dying continent” which Represents, in the view of experts here, a very shrewd view of the facts. A Norwegian journal says: “Swedish and Danish, papers write regarding this, that their countries’ culture is inseparably bound up with the old democratic tradition and the same can ho said of Norway. We Norwegians have been accustomed for generations to think and talk freely, and ourselves to choose who shall administer our affairs. If we lose these democratic rights •u<c lose our culture’s kernel. Perhaps we have not 'paid heed to the value of the free word and free criticism as no ought. We regard them as a matter of "course, hut if wo were one day to lose them a storm of indignation would burst foirth.”