Wanganui Pilot Hero Helps Save Burning Bomber

Northern Advocate, 14 July 1941, Page 3

Wanganui Pilot Hero Helps Save Burning Bomber

LONDON, July 12.

A thrilling story of a successful effort in bringing home a burning bomber is told by the Air Ministry, cays a British Official Wireless message.

The second pilot, a New Zealander from Wanganui, played a heroic part in the struggle to save the machine. A Wellington bomber, returning with the crew well satisfied from a raid on Munster, had reached the Zuider Zee, when suddenly a Messerschmitt 110 came up from underneath and raked the bomber from end to end.

The front gunner was wounded in a foot, the bomber’s starboard engine was badly damaged, the hydraulic system and the wireless were put out of action, the undercarriage fell down, the bomb doors fell open, and the intercommunication set failed.

The pilot’s cockpit was filled with smoke fumes, and, worst of all, a sheet of flame four feet or five feet long gushed but where one of the petrol feed pipes in the wing had been split open by a cannon shell. German’s Fatal Mistake

It must have seemed to the German pilot that the bomber's end had come, for he closed in recklessly, and then turned, and exposed the belly of his aircraft, and as he did so the reargunner sent 200 rounds crashing into if. The Messerschmitt rolled over on its back, and, apparently out of control, went down in a deep spiral dive, smoke pouring from the port engine. When all attempts to extinguish the fire from the leaking petrol pipe had failed, the second pilot, a New Zealander from Wanganui, decided to climb out along the wing and try to smother the fire with a. cockpit cover which he had brought as a cushion. At first he was going out without a parachute, as he thought this would lessen the wind resistance, but the rest of the crew insisted that he should wear it. Hazardous Task

They tied a rope from the dinghy round his waist and, with the navigator holding the end of the rope, he climbed out of the hatch. He had to get down about three feet from the hatch to the wing and then another three feet along the wing. "First I had to hang on to the hatch while I worked out how I was going to do it." he said. “Then I hopped out on to the wing. I kicked holes down the side of the fuselage, which exposed the goedetics, and gave me a foothold. I held on with one hand until I had got two footholds on the wing. "The fire and the blast from the Messerschmitt’s cannon shells had stripped part of the wing covering, and that helped. Then I caught hold of some of the sections of the wing with the other hand and managed to get down flat on to the wing, my feet well dug in arid hanging on with both hands. Worse Than Any Gale "Once I could not get enough hold, and the wind lifted me off the wing and. sent me against the fuselage again. But I still had my feet twisted in, and I managed to get hold of the edge of the hatch, and worked myself back on to the wing again. It was just a matter of getting something to hang on to. It was like being in a terriffic gale, only much worse than any gale t have ever known. As I got along the wing, I was behind the airscrew, so I was in the slipstream as well. "Once or twice I thought I was going. I had the cockpit cover tucked underneath me as I lay fiat on the wing. I tried to push the cover down through a hole in the wing on to the leaking pipe where the fire was coming from, but hte parachute on my chest prevented me from getting close enough to the wing, and the wind kept on lifting me. “The cover nearly dragged me o(T. I stull'ed it down through the hole, but as soon as I took my hand away the terrific wind blew it out again. My arms were getting tired, and I had to try a new hold. I was hanging on with my left arm. As soon as I moved my j right hand the cover blew out of the ! hole again, and it was gone before I could grab it. After that, there was j nothing to do but get back again. Pulled Into Plane "The navigator kept a strain on the rope, and I pulled myself back along the wing and up the side of the fuselage to the hatch, holding on as tight as I could. ' Getting back was worse than getting out, and by this time I was pretty well all in. The hardest of the lot was getting my right leg in. In the end, the navigator reached out and pulled it in." Over the North Sea the crew jettisoned the front guns, ammunition and i flares. j

They were ten miles off the coast of England when petrol, which made a pool inside the wing, blazed up furiously, and burned more holes in the fabric, but then, as suddenly, the fire died down and at the same time the flame lrom the petrol pipe went out. Safe Landing

The pilot flew inland, and, with no flaps and no brakes, and with the tomb doors open, circled a strange aerodrome which he had chosen because it had a larger landing ground than his own base. He called up the flare path: “We have been badly shot up. I hope we don’t mess up your flare path too badly when we land.” He landed safely.