DOWNED A HEINKEL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 275, 20 November 1943, Page 5

DOWNED A HEINKEL

N.Z. AIRMAN’S SUCCESS IN BEAUFIGHTER (Special Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.) Recd. 6.45 p.m. London, Nov. 18. After carrying out 82 sorties in a Beauflghter during the London blitz and from the Battle of El Alamein onwards, Pilot-Officer W. Busby, of Kaitaia, shot down a Heinkel 111 in his very last operation-. It was over Kos. He and his pilot sighted the Heinkel at dawn. They had flown for lour and a-'half hours from their base in Palestine and they had finished patrol over Leros and Samos and were about to land on Kos to refuel when they saw three Heinkels in the twilight, bombing aerodromes. They chased one for eight minutes and then set fire to its starboard motor from a range of 150 yards. It went down straight to the sea. The Beauflghter landed on Kos, refuelled and returned to Palestine via Cyprus. Two days later Kos fell to the Germans.

Busby speaks fluent Maori (he comes irom one of the oldest families in North Auckland and is a descendant of James Busby, who was appointed British Resident in 1832). He arrived in England during the Battle of Britain witli the second course of airmen to come from New Zealand. He began as an air gunner on Lysanders on army manoeuvres, then after a period of instructing became a radio observer in a Beauflghter. To his intense disgust he never saw a German bomber during the blitz. He went to Egypt in February, 1942, following the Eighth Army from El Alamein to Tripoli. His squadron's job was to cover ports captured by the Eighth Army, but he never sighted a bomber at night. Busby was later flying from Algiers to Tripoli when his starboard engine caught fire at 8000 feet. The pilot made a forced landing on a dried lake, where they spent 31 sweltering hours before Arabs found them.