NAZI AIRMEN CAPTURED

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23129, 19 September 1940, Page 8

NAZI AIRMEN CAPTURED

♦ COMMENTS MADE AFTER LANDING LONDON, August 13. One of the many German airmen who were captured after parachute escapes from their wrecked machines yesterday descended in a street in a south-east coast town. Twelve others who "baled out’’ over the town landed in the country some distance away. All were quickly rounded up by the police. A German count, aged 24, is believed to be among the crews of two machines which crashed on another part of the south-east coast. The pilot of this machine tried to land in lop-sided fashion, but a young bombardier rushed out of a hedge with a Lewis gun and literally peppered it. A squadron of Royal Air Force fighters were signalling to the bombardier to get out of the way, but he stuck to his task and finished off the machine. R.A.F. “Too Good” A pilot whose machine crashed near a south-west town after an air fight is said to. have been educated at Oxford. He speaks English fluently. To his captors he is said to have expresesd admiration of the fine work of the pilot who pursued him and to have remarked that if the Royal Air Force continued activities' over Germany, as at present, the war should soon be over. “Those Spitfires are very good. This is my heaven, I am out of it!” declared a German in good English when his wounds were being attended to after his aeroplane had been forced down near a south-east coast town. The'pilot had walked towards a farm worker with his hands up and- said; “A cigarette and a cup of tea, please.” Yet another enemy airman who landed in south-east England said, in broken English: "No more fighting. English too good ” A pilot whose machine, a Heinkel 111 bomber, was brought down in the south-west by a Hurricane, exclaimed after landing by parachute, "A shell got the port engine. A shell got the middle engine. A million marks gone!” It became known yesterday that one member of the crew of a bomber which was shot down over Portland on Sunday was an Italian. He baled out of the aircraft and was rescued from, the sea, with his three companions, by a Royal Air Force speedboat.