N.Z. FIGHTER PILOTS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 96, 19 January 1944, Page 5

N.Z. FIGHTER PILOTS

Cobber Kain’s Old Squadron (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) CENTRAL ITALY, January 13. Flying now in Italy with “Cobber” Kain’s old squadron is Flight Sergeant E. M. Karatau, Turakina, the first Maori Spitfire pilot. Since the Allied invasion of Italy he has flown dozens of sorties over landing beaches, above the front and across the Adriatic Sea to support the Yugoslav Partisan forces.

Till recently the squadron was commanded by a New Zealander, Squadron Leader E. L. (Nipper) Joyce, D.F.M., Hamilton, and he had two Maori pilots, Karatau and Pilot Officer Ted Bennett, brother of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Bennett, the former commander of the Maori Battalion. Bennett, who was the first Maori fighter pilot to join the Desert Air Force, was a night-fighter pilot in Africa and has completed a tour of operations with Spitfires in Italy. Ever since Kain became the R.A.F.’s first fighter ace of this war New Zealand has always been well represented among this squadron’s mixed group of British and Dominion pilots. Twice in Africa it was commanded by New Zealanders, Joyce in . Tunisia and Squadron Leader Derek Ward, D.F.C. and bar, North Auckland, in Libya. When Ward was. leading the squadron in night strafing raids across the Luftwaffe’s airfields in Cyrenaica one of his most prominent. young sergeant pilots was Joyce. Within a few months Joyce became the desert’s leading night-fighter pilot. In five nights over El Alamein he shot down three German bombers. Soon after the squadron’s total bag reached 300 in Tunisia he- returned from a training period to be it;.i commander for the end of the North African campaign, during the Sicilian invasion and in southern Italy. His promotion from warrant officer* to squadron leader in less than a year is one of the most rapid known in the R.A.F. in Africa,

Two . other New Zealanders, one ot whom is now the pilot with the longest service in the squadron, flew with Joyce during the invasion and from airfields in southern Italy. They are Warrant Officer W. J. Mygind, Pahiatun, and Flisht Sergeant John Horn, Wellington. Both Jovcc and Horn had brothers fighting in North Island infantry battalions in the New Zealand Division-. Yet another New Zealander. Flight Sergeant T. W. Buckley, Auckland, has been wPh the squadron on recent offensive swap's-over Albania and Yugoslavia. ' /■>"- .