A PARIS SENSATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24945, 18 June 1942, Page 3

A PARIS SENSATION

PLANE'S LOW-LEVEL FLIGHT

CHAMPS ELYSEES TRAVERSED LONDON. June 16. A Vichy report states that an unidentified plane, believed to be Free French, flew over Paris at noon on June 13 and dropped a Tricolour on the Unknown Soldier's Tomb in the Arc de Triomphe. It afterwards flew over the Champs Elysees and Place de la Concorde. The Air Ministry News Service, giving fuller details of the Beaufighter pilot's action in Paris, says the pilot twice travelled the length of the Champs Elysees. As a tribute to Free France and to the glorious memory of the sons of France who fell in the last Great War he dropped a Tricolour over the Arc de Triomphe, to fall as near as possible to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the eternal lamp burns its splendid symbol; then he turned, and, flying between buildings, fired a burst of cannon shells at the former French Ministry of Marine, now used by the Nazis as military headquarters. The shells spattered the front of the buildings and crashed through windows. The whole operation from the time the aircraft was airborne until it returned to its base occupied 150 minutes and was carried out without any serious interference by the enemy. Over France the day was fine, which meant no cloud cover whatever for the aircraft, and so the airman hedgehopped all the way across France and back again. The aircraft was so low that the pilot flew under many hightension electric cables. At one point the aircraft crossed a German fighter aerodrome at a height of only 20 feet. Having dropped the flag, the pilot flew straight along the Champs Elysees level with third-floor windows. People in the streets stood amazed. Some waved and cheered when they recognised it as a British machine.