AIRMEN’S ORDEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24793, 18 December 1941, Page 7

AIRMEN’S ORDEAL

TWO DAYS IN DINGHY SWEPT ON CHANNEL CURRENT LONDON, Dec. 11. :The rescue of six airmen who came ashore on the Isle of Wight in,a rubber dinghy after their bomber was forced down into the sea through lack of petrol when returning from a raid provides one of the most thrilling stories of the war. The airmen were rescued after battling for two days and two nights against heavy seas. Their Wellington, after being forced down, broke up 30' miles from the Thames Estuary. Their rubber dinghy contained four paddles, but they were powerless against the current, which swept them down the Channel, tossed “like a cork on a waterspout.’’

Searching aircraft failed to detect tne dinghy as it drifted for nearly 200 miles. Finally, it was sighted by a Royal Air Force launch, but the airmen paddled the dinghy into rockstrewn Steel Bay, at Ventnor. Coastguards. police, civilians, and soldiers scrambled down 200-feet cliffs and waded out neck-high to assist the airmen ashore. As the rescuers clutched the tiny craft, a young airman, his head bound up with a blood-stained rag, called out hoarsely, “ Where are we? ” When told, he replied, “ Thank the Lord, I thought it might be France.”