VILLAGE SAVED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 256, 26 September 1940, Page 7

VILLAGE SAVED.

PILOT IN BLAZING PLANE.

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 24

How a pilot-officer chose a crash landing involving great risk to himself rather than abandon his _ machine and so endanger a village in v/hich his aircraft probably would have crashed is told in the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to an Australian whose home is in Edwardstown, South .'-Australia. ' , , During an attack on German bombers this officer, AV. H. Millington, damaged a Dornier but found himself engaged by three Messerschmitts. He ■damaged one of these and shook off the others, and then returned to attack other Nazi bombers. In a further attack on him by two Messerschmitts he brought down one, but a cannon shell from -the other hit his engine, causing the aeroplane to catch hre. Realising the danger a ward which he was flying would be in from the uncontrolled blazing machine, Pilot-Officer Millington kept his place and landed in a field. The petrol tanks burst just after the gallant pilot had got clear of his machine. NAZI PILOT RESCUED. During heavy fighting over the sea coast yesterday Lieutenant J a « ol,s officer of the Royal Engineers saved a German pilot-sergeant Horn dr oi mg after a Messerschmitt uas sho down in the sea by a direct hit from one of the two Spitfires purßiiing i - The German pilot triedl to sw ashore, but the curren out, and Lieutenant Jacobs who s the crash from the Folkesto e break water, dived in and to the exhausted German. He turned his back and supporte _ hi motor-boat arrived. When rescue , German was found to be a ffermg rrom a broken leg and a Rinded right arm. ‘ “Your Spitfires are too good tor he said when brought as o • Cached ant Jacobs later stated that he the wounded man only. ]