"HOT PARTY"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 260, 3 November 1941, Page 6

"HOT PARTY"

WINGS OVER LIBYA BOMBING BENGASI NEW ZEALAND SERGEANTS (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) CAIRO, October 6. "In Libya successful attacks were made by bombers of the Royal Air Force ..." Almost every time a squadron or so of bombers make those "successful attacks," New Zealand pilots, observers or air-gunners are mixed up in it somewhere. There may be only two New Zealanders in a squadron; often there are as many as half a dozen, as in the case of the 'drome to which two certain ser-geant-observers belonged. One of them was from Auckland, the other from Hamilton. In their squadron, hidden away near a desert escarpment, there were four others who had joined the R.N.Z.A.F. and were now hammering enemy bases, supply columns and harbours. They were enjoying an only too brief leave in Cairo. Those two young New Zealanders had been in, or rather over, some interesting places, as when they took part in one of a series of raids on Bengasi. It was the fourth successive nignt that British planes had given this important enemy coastal oase a taste oi the K.A.F.'s growing striking power. The tourtn night meant a "hot party" because tne enemy were all ready waiting for them coming. After three nights' bombing tney had decided that it was quite probable that the British might just be inclined to drop in again. Target a Supply Ship The target was a supply ship bobbing jauntily in the outer harbour, at least that was the target which was the immediate concern of the two New Zealanders. The raiders had come straight across from the tiesert. As they swooped over the town to circle above the harbour they ran into a hail of "flack."

"We could see the stuff bursting before, behind and all round us— black puffs which you could see quite plainly in the moonlight," said one of the sergeants. "The marvel is that nothing touched us."

They got their target. "We got out of it safely enough," said one of the New Zealanders, "and I thinfr that ship would not do much more sailing."

Another trip they had done Was over Derna, wnile not many months ago, when Crete was in tne news, tney had the experience of bombing tne Germans on Maleme drome. "There were a heil of a lot of kites' down there,"' one of them said. "It was just like a circus. Kven though it was at nignt we could see them plainly. There were hundreds of them."' They went straight to work on that occasion and ielt a good number of German planes in flames.

The New Zealanders consider that watching a stick of bombs drop towards tne target is really a queerer sensation than watching the "flack" come up towards them. One of them recalled a raid he had once been with over a desert aerodrome. The flares were glowing when tney arrived and they could pick out the planes squatting like sliver flies on a burnished tray.

The New Zealand observer was keeping one eye on the instruments ana the other on the spot where he hoped the stick would fall. At the rignt moment he pulled across the "micky-mouse," or hand lever which releases the bombs. The experience at that time was still novel to him, and he took more than usual interest in the missiles' flight.

"They seemed suddenly to flatten out as they left the plane," he said. "They were travelling so slowly that they hardly seemed to move. Then you could see them gaining speed and moving forward with the 'kite.' As they reached the ground they seemed to swoop right over the target. It looked like a bad miss, but actually they hit the target right in the centre.

Haying completed this operational training course, he was assigned to take part in two sea sweeps, one over the Channel over the French-Belgian coast, and the other just off Denmark. Both were made in daylight and both were uneventful. "Out in the Blue" The other New Zealander joined the squadron when he arrived here from New Zealand. He has been out on big raids, not to mention innumerable parrols over desert and road. The four other New Zealanders on the station hailed from Auckland, HaWera, Thames and Te Awamutu. Sometimes they ran into isolated groups of New Zealand soldiers doing a specialised job out in the blue, such as at one place where a couple of engineers were operating a branch railway system, with nobody near them for miles.

It is good to meet some of the boys," they say. "When we are in Cairo we always drop in at the New Zealand Club and are sure to meet somebody we know." But they are not in Cairo too often, or anvwhere else except out over the desert, quietly doing a real job of work.