NIGHT FIGHTING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24630, 11 June 1941, Page 5

NIGHT FIGHTING

NEW ZEALANDER'S RECORD (0.C.) LONDON, May 21. 4 A large number of New Zealand pilots are now operating at night in fighter aircraft against the German bombers. One of them, Flight Lieutenant D. F. Wilson (Tauranga and Wellington), who is commanding a flight of Defiants, recently shot down three raiders in two nights over Glasgow. When he shot down the first German, Flight Lieutenant Wilson set the enemy aircraft alight along the whole length of the fuselage, from the main plane to. the tail unit. With his last burst he blew part of the ta'l right off. The following night the New Zealander shot down two raiders. He had only just started his patrol when he saw a Heinkel 111 over Glasgow. He attacked and sent the raider into a vertical dive with an ominous red glow in the pilot's cockpit. Continuing with his patrol, still over Glasgow, he found another Heinkei. The bullets from his first burst went into the German's cockpit and fire broke out in the aircraft. Suddenly the Nazi swerved as if he were making an attempt to ram the New Zealander's Defiant. Flight Lieutenant Wilson turned sharply, and the raider passed underneath. "The Heinkel missed my tail by inches and then went down out of control," he said in his official report. Flight Lieutenant Wilson, who is an old boy of Waitaki Boys' High School, has been commanding a flight of night fighters since last August, and for a time operated over the London area.