NEWZEALANDERS IN ACTION

Southland Times, Issue 24161, 25 June 1940, Page 6

NEWZEALANDERS IN ACTION

Air Battles With Germans

REFERENCE TO GORE PILOT LONDON, May 31. The New Zealand pilot who selected the motto “What the Hell!” for his Hurricane fighter, together with the special “unlucky coat of arms” comprised of the figure 13, a broken mirror, a man walking under a ladder, and three cigarettes lighted from one match, comes from Whangarei. He has two Dorniers to his credit, and after he had shot them down he returned to his station with his gun sights shot away and his Hurricane plastered with bullet holes. He has been in England for two years, and one of his greatest friends is a fellow New Zealander from Okoroire, who once “spanked” cows'in the Waikato, and is now a fighter pilot with three Nazis chalked up and two “possibles.”

These ' two New Zealanders went through all their training together at Wigram before coming to England, and until.this week they had not been separated. Now the . man from Whangarei has been posted to another station. .

A . party. of Empire journalists had the opportunity of'visiting their squadrons ;this week, when they met a number of the pilbtk. With them was the farmer from Okoroire, who was stationed ,in- France until recently. “They? didn’t : give me any trouble,” he said, when commenting in the mess before lunch on the three Nazis he shot down. “In' fact, I was rather surprised that they went so quietly. One was a transport, another a Dornier, and the third a Messerschmitt. They went down immediately, and there was no question about it at all. ' " 7 “The other two I’m not sure about, and there was 'One Messerschmitt 110 which puzzled me a lot. I got on to him all right, and let him' have all, my ammunition, but; he went flying along as if nothing had .happened. It was rather, disconcerting ” • ’

The commanding officer of the squadron is. a short, stocky Irishman, very proud of his young pilots—“ You can’t scare.’em,” he said—and with a respect for German airmen. He described- the Messerschmitt .110 as “red hot,” and declared: “But we can deal with them if you give lis the aircraft. We must think big’about this war in the air. We want 10,000 at least; and then you’re talking.” ? SQUADRON’S RECORD So far the squadron has accounted for 52 Nazis and has lost five Hurricanes; Of these, two pilots are'accounted for—one returned after an exciting adventure—but three, are missing, including a New Zealander from Gore. “The chap who; got back had quite a time,” said the commanding officer. “He bailed out at 17,000 feet and. on the way down about half the Belgian population seemed to fire off at him, thinking he was a German parachutist. The heel of a shoe was shot off and the bullet burned his sock. He .landed on the beach near Ostend, walked to a cargo boat, and caught it just as she was about to set ~off across the Channel. “She was attacked by a German motor torpedo-boat and two torpedoes went right under her. > The captain, a’ fiery Scot,' was niost annoyed, and did his best to ram the ‘Jerry.’ Eventually the pilot—an Oxford graduate—turned up here again safe and sound, looking for another machine. Another of our chaps came down in the sea and was picked up by a destroyer.” Whether the man from Gore gets back again io the mess seems to be in doubt. He has now been missing four days. Air mail letters with the postmark “Gore” wait for him in the mail rack. Perhaps he will be lucky. The station is well in the country, surrounded by farm land. From the mess, while waiting for lunch, the New Zealander from Okoroire watched a number of bobby calves careering over a paddock. “That makes you think of home,” he said, with enthusiasm. “If I

come through this all right I’m going back to good old New Zealand after the war to work on the old farm again. There’s a lot to be said for it.”

The Gore airman referred to was probably Flying Officer R. R. P. Fisher, son of Mr and Mrs Robert Fisher, who has since been reported safe. / — :