FIRST ACTION TEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 113, 14 May 1940, Page 7

FIRST ACTION TEST

NEW BRITISH PLANE

BRIEF BUT SUCCESSFUL '

ENCOUNTER

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received May 14, 10.20 a.m.)

RUGBY, May 13,

Britain's latest fighter aircraft, the Boulton Paul Defiant, went into action for the first time over the. Dutch coast early on Sunday, as already announced by the Air Ministry. Their first encounter lasted only five minutes, from the moment when a German Junkers 88 was sighted out at sea trying to bomb three British ships until it crashed in a field south of The Hague.

A squadron of new Fighter Command Defiants —the first fighters equipped with the power-controlled gun turret —had been keeping watch round The Hague for some time when the Junkers was sighted. The squadron leader engaged it, together with two other Defiants, as it turned towards the coast. Finding himself cut off. by the three British fighters, the Junkers dived, but the squadron leader outmanoeuvred him and saw his air-gun-ner score hits. The Junkers flew low over three fields, with smoke pouring from the port engine, and with the Defiant still pursuing. Finally the Junkers crashed in a field full of grazing cows.

A single-seater Spitfire which accompanied the two-seater Defiants on their patrol shot down a Heinkel 111, which, like the Junkers, was attempting a bombing attack over the sea. The Heinkel also tried to escape by going into a dive, but the British flight-lieu-tenant manoeuvred his machine into position, gave the coup de grace, and saw the Heinkel made a crash landing.