BOLD EXPLOIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1942, Page 4

BOLD EXPLOIT

FLIGHT BY DAY ACROSS FRANCE TRIBUTE PAID TO UNKNOWN SOLDIER. NAZIS HEADQUARTERS IN PARIS (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) RUGBY, June 16. The Air Ministry NeWs Service, giving fuller details of the Beaufighter pilot’s action in Paris (reported in an earlier message) 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 an eternal lamp burns as a splendid symbol. Then the airman turned, and, flying between buildings, fired a burst of cannon shells at the former French Ministry of Marine, now used by the Nazis as a military headquarters. The shells spattered the front of the building and crashed through windows. The whole operation, from the time the aircraft was airborne until it returned to its base, occupied two hours and a half, and was carried out without any serious interference by the enemy. Over France the day was fine, which meant that there was no cloud cover whatever for the aircraft, so the airman hedge-hopped all the way across France and back again. The aircraft was so low that the pilot flew under many high-tension electric cables. At one point the aircraft crossed a German fighter aerodrome at a height of only twenty 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 that it was a British machine over them.