FIGHTER PILOT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 142, 17 May 1941, Page 8

FIGHTER PILOT

PALMERSTON NORTH MAN. EXPERIENCES IN THE AIR. One of the ten pilots in the New Zealand Fighter Squadron who have brought down Nazi planes is Pilot--Officer A. G. Mclntyre, son of SeniorSergeant and Mrs J. Mclntyre, of Palmerston North. Among them the Members of the squadron nave ao-J counted for seven enemy machines.

Pilot-Officer Mclntyre, states a London correspondent, lias one and a-half Nazis to his credit. He learnt to fly at Kongotai, where his instructor was Squadron-Leader J. Rawnsloy, and ho completed Iris training in New Zealand berore arriving in Britain in April, 1940. After a period on F’aircy Battles he was posted to Spitfires, and later to Hurricanes. He shot down his first Hun when his squadron intercepted 24 Dormer 21o’s. A head-on attack was made and Mclntyre singled out one Gorman ami fired into it at point-blank range until lie saw the front of its cockpit blown out. Thu Nazi went into a dive of 20601 t on to an aerodrome it had just been bombing. Pilot-Officer Mclntyre was also shot down himself. This was when he was with a section of nine Hurricanes. They intercepted about 150 Dormers and protecting Messersclimitt 110 s over Portsmouth. After a dog-fight tlie New Zealander lound that tlie Messerschmitts were trying to coax him out over the Channel, with a Dormer as a decoy. The Mc.’s were above him ami the Dornier below. The lluns were waiting tor him to swoop on tlie Dornier and then to shoot him down before he could reach it.

Pilot-Officer Mclntyre tried to bluff the Me.’s. He- put his nose up as though he was about to climb alter them. The Me.’s moved up higher. But Mclntyre turned and dived on the Dornier, wiiieli began to “waggle its wings” as a signal to the fighters to come to its assistance. And whereas it had attempted to “look sick” while posing as a decoy, its health suddenly improved ! in the race that followed the Me.’s won, and Mclntyre’s plane was badly shot about. It went into a spin and with petrol gushing over him he struggled to get it under control. In an (attempt to save the plane he did not use his parachute, but tried to land. When he tried to flatten out, however, there was no “lift” in the damaged right wing, and at 100011 it was too late ro jump. Eventually Mclntyre crash-landed in a ploughed field, and as he clambered out- of the cockpit feeling ill with petrol he had swallowed, and smarting in several places with wounds caused by cannon shell splinters, a number of farmers came rushing up armed with shovels, pitchforks, and other agricultural, implements. The pilot and farmers stood staring at one another for a few moments, Mclntyre dazed and sick. Then he remembered that the guns were switcjied on and warned them away. An elderly farmer patted him on the back and asked him how lie felt. The New Zealander was taken to hospital where lie stayed for seven weeks.