GUARDED BY BOARS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21575, 10 February 1940, Page 4

GUARDED BY BOARS

PRISONER OF V’VR’S STRANGE WARD2RS The parents of a young naval airman who had mourned him as dead for nearly two months recently heard that he was captured by a U-boat he tried to bomb, and kept prisoner on board the submarine for a fortnight. He is now in a German castle, according to the “Daily Express," and he writes from there: "The castle moat is filled with wild boars to prevent prisoners escaping. “I went out in my machine to look for a submarine which was supposed to have sunk one of four merchant ships. I could not find it, so started back. “My observer suddenly shouted, ’There’s a merchant ship on the horizon. Let’s look at it.’ When we were almost on it my chap said, ‘Go low. so that I can see its name.’ “So I went to sea level and slowed down. Just as I got alongside I spotted the submarine on the far side of the ship. Took a Chance “Up I went, but the U-boat had already got half-submerged, leaving me no time to get to a safe height to bomb from. So I took a chance and bombed from a low height in order to hit.

“My first bomb missed by about twenty feet and I hit the sea at 200 m.p.h. at a steep dive. I went straight down without stopping.

"I tried to get out of the cockpit, but was jammed in with a stuck roof. When I was almost out of breath I managed to break free and came to the surface.

“My observer must have been killed at once. I never saw him again. I looked for him, but with no luck. “I then found I was nearly a mile away from the merchant ship, in very cold water, with flying clothes on and not a little knocked about. Somehow I got there, and clambered aboard.

“Some of the submarine’s crew were collecting the ship's papers, and I was taken prisoner. A few minutes later up came the submarine, the ship was torpedoed almost at once, and once more I was submerged. I also had to swim to the submarine.

"I spent a fortnight in that submarine before it returned to Germany. I was then lodged at the local gaol for a fortnight, followed by a fortnight elsewhere, and then moved to this place." In another letter the officer tells his father that a wrist-watch recently given him by his uncle was forced right into his wrist by the impact when he struck the water in his machine. When he found he had to swim a mile to reach the merchant ship, “I thought,” he said, "of the many bad motor-bike smashes I had had at home, and said to myself, ‘This cannot be the end.’ ”

Although his bomb missed the submarine, it was so badly shaken that, during the fortnight he was aboard, the commander carefully avoided battle.