N.Z. AIRMAN’S VARIETY

Grey River Argus, 20 September 1944, Page 2

N.Z. AIRMAN’S VARIETY

(Official War Correspondent.) ADRIATIC COAST, Sept. 15. The distinction of being the oldest pilot of his squadron and one of the oldest of the whole Desert Air Force belongs to a New Zealand Flying Officer, R. H. Newton, of Wellington, who is now flying Mustangs ,in support of the Eighth Army, in their drive up the Adriatic Coast. Newton who left New Zealand in August, 1941, as a Sergeant, went to England for further training, and, when that was completed, was posted direct to the “Shark” Squadron of the Desert Air Force, with which he has done the whole of his operational flying. He has now been with the souadron more than two years. It was at Gambut in May. 1942, during the retreat to Al Alamein, that Newton joined the “Shark” Squadron, so-call-ed through a row of sharks’ teeth and an eye painted on the nose of their fighters, and since that time he has had his share of lively experiences. Pilots of the squadron point out, incidentally, that the shark device was used by them before being adopted by the well-known General Chennault’s “Tigers” in China. Times have changed for pilots of the D.A.F. because they now strike very little enemy opposition in the air, but, when Newton first joined them, and they were attacking aerodromes in the desert behind the enemy lines, they could always be sure there would be a good bag of guns waiting for them. It was on one such flight, soon after he joined the squadron, that Newtpn was shot down and crash-landed within the Tobruk fortress, then surrounded by the enemy, but managed to hitchhike back to his base in good order for further flying. Within the past two months he too found himself in a ticklish situation, when, on returning from a sortie from over enemy territory in Northern Italy, he found that a bomb, he had not found target for, had become unsafe, so that if he had landed and the bomb had come off the rack, both his aircraft and himself would have been blown to pieces. “I reported the position to the ground.” he said, "and after cruising around for some time, I was instructed to drop the aircraft in the sea and bail out. So I flew* out a little way over the Adriatic and stepped over the side. I landed safely on the shore and once again hitch-hiked home.” A great deal of Newton’s flyings have been done in dose support of troops of the Eighth Army, which demands a special ability in dive-bomb-ing and. strafing, if it is to be effective. It was at El Hamma, during the Tunisian campaign, that really close support of ground troops was undertaken by the D.A.F. Their particular job in that battle was to go and bomb German 88 millimetre guns, a formidable all-purpose weapon, and to strafe right down a line designated by artillery smoke, within five or six hundred yards of our forward troops. “It was a new experience then,” Newton told me, “but now we’re doing it every day, and a system called “cab-rank” has been evolved to enable us to get right on even the smallest target. We cruise over the target area, waiting in a cab-rank as it were, and as each pilot’s turn comes a forward “opip” officer on the ground gives us map reference and other detail from which we can identify enemy gun positions, headquarters, or whatever it is, and deal with it most effectively.” An idea of the havoc being wrought by our aircraft over German communications, may be gained from a laconic account given by Newton of a recent day’s operations. “We went right up to North Italy, near Trieste,” he said, “where We bombed and sank a 2.000-ton ship. While we were there, incidentally, we saw the liner “Rex” on her side and on fire, after a bombing of the previous day. Turning inland, we shot up thirteen locomotives, destroyed four aircraft on the ground and started .a very big fire in a station yard. On the same day we shot down a J.U. 88. I bagged' a J.U. 52, a big troops’ transport, on the ground, and we also left three Savoia 79’s burning on the ground.” Newton took part in the invasion of South France, when his squadron had the task of escorting gliders, to protect them from ground fire. “It was an amazing sight,” he said, “to see mile after mile of gliders coming in steadily to land invading troops, and we were able to watch the show comfortably, as only one gun was firing from the ground. It was a piece of cake.”