LOCKED IN DEATH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21272, 8 December 1943, Page 3

LOCKED IN DEATH

PLANE & U-BOAT

PILOT’S SUICIDE DIVE RAIDER SENT TO DOOM (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) •(British Official Wireless.) (10.30 a.in.) RUGBY, Dec. 7. A suicide crash dive by a British bomber on the deck of a damaged U-boat lo make sure of destroying the enemy craft is reported in a Canadian Navy statement.

The sole survivor was picked up in the Bay of Biscay by the Canadian destroyer Iroquois. He is Sergeant A. A. Turner, the wounded rail gunner,

who was floating lor several hours in a rubber dinghy' He said that a Wellington bomber spotted a U-boat on the surface and dropped its bombs square on the target. But not before the submarine’s guns got some telling shots.

-When our pilot realised that we were going to crash he decided that the Nazi's should go too. _He manoeuvred the plane and crash-dived right on the U-boat and the submarine and the plane vanished beneath the surface locked in a death grip.” Canadian destroyers and corvettes helped the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to blockade the German submarine fleet in the Bay of Biscay just before Britain acquired new bases in the Azores. The blockade was so successful states the Canadian Navy Minister, Mr. A. MacDonald, that the modest Allied losses in the North Atlantic were more than balanced by the heavy toll of U-boats. In the Bay of Biscay alone the losses inflicted on U-boats were so great on some occasions that the sea seemed alive with submarine survivors.