RESCUE AT SEA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23619, 1 April 1940, Page 13

RESCUE AT SEA

WOUNDED GERMAN AIRMAN FEAT BY BRITISH BOAT [from our own correspondent] LONDON, March 12 A Royal Air Force seaplane tender spent 18 hours at sea in rescuing the only survivor from a Heinkel bomber shot down off the Aberdeenshire coast. The boat left its Scottish base at three o'clock in the afternoon, but the weather rapidly became bad, and as there was danger of running on a sandbank it had to lay off at sea the whole night, in extreme cold and rain. It could not return to port until nine o'clock next morning. v The journey to the spot where the Heinkel had been shot down took four hours. There the motor-boat captain, a flying officer, found a Coastal Command aeroplane _ awaiting him overhead. In the dusk the tender sped along, guided by coloured lights fired from the aircraft. The survivor was found GO miles from the coast in a rubber dinghy. Fie was lying with his head on the side of the boat, with bullet wounds in his legs and one of his shoulders. Of the three others of the bomber's crew, one had been killed and two so severely wounded that they were drowned in trying to board their dinghy. A ladder was lowered from the motor-boat and the German was lifted on board. He was fitted out with dry clothing, and his wounds were dressed. So hurriedly had the tender set out to save him that there was no time to lay in extra provisions. It carried a bottle of rum, but while a tot was being poured out to revive the prisoner all the rum was spilled, and the bottle broken by the pitching of tiie launch in the swell. \ The German told his rescuers in good English not to worry. He pointed to the rubber dinghy and told them where to find a bottle of whisky, soda water, chocolates, biscuits and sweets. Three minutes after these had been salvaged he was fast asleep. He is now in the sick quarters of a Royal Air Force station in Scotland.