FAILED TO RETURN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24716, 19 September 1941, Page 4

FAILED TO RETURN

V.C. HOLDER MISSING ATTACK ON GERMAN TARGET RUGBY. Sept. 17. Sergeant James Allen Ward, V.C.. of New Zealand, who is reported missing. was in charge of a Wellington bomber of the New Zealand Bomber Squadron, and did not return from a recent attack on a target in Germany. The bomber took off a few minutes after 8 o’clock. Nothing was heard from it after a signal at the time when it was almost certain that the target had been reached.

A few weeks ago Sergeant Pilot Ward was made a captain of the Wellington Bomber Squadron, and was given a crew of sergeants. Thev had already made one attack together against battle cruisers at Brest on the night of September 13. They were an experienced crew, and most of them had made as many as 22 operational flights. They were, in fact, the crew with whom Sergeant Pilot Ward had come to his sciuadron from an operational training unit.

It was as second pilot that Sergeant Pilot Ward was awarded the V.C. in July. After an attack on Munster he climbed out on to the wing of his bomber when flying at 13.000 feet over the North Sea in an endeavour to put out a fire which -an enemy fighter's bullets had started. This was on his seventh operational flight. Sergeant Pilot Ward was shortly to have received his award, from the King.