LONG NAVAL SERVICE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21809, 4 September 1945, Page 4

LONG NAVAL SERVICE

WELLINGTON OFFICER VIEWS ON KAMIKAZES (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Sept, 4. Five years’ service in the Fleet Air Arm, including operations in the Western Desert and. against Italian targets, reached a climax for Lieut.Commander D. K. Evans, of Wellington, with service in the Pacific on the aircraft-carriers Indomitable and Victorious and in carrier force strikes against the Sakishima Islands, Formosa and Japan’s homeland. Lieut.-Commander Evans, who is now in Wellington on leave, is the first New Zealander to hold the appointment of commander (flying) in a fleet carrier. He left New Zealand in 1940 with the first draft of flying volunteers for the naval flying service, and has been almost continuously on active service since.

“The kamikaze pilots are really good at the game,” Lieut.-Commander Evans said. “Unfortunately for the kamikazes which managed to penetrate the fighter and anti-aircraft defences, they found the flight decks of Admiral Fraser’s ‘flat-tops’ made of three inches of toughened steel instead of the wooden decks normal in American carriers, and many a Japanese suicide pilot gained his distinction and sacrificed his life only to have the human-guided bomb skid off the decks.”