THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1956,
Page
THE JOHNNIE JOHNSON STORY
Steve Screamed
Like A
Demented Man
(Coultnued from Page 6)
shad
nover forret
hin
its Hurricane was often bent
we chorusi. Anti dramatic description of what by this doree of the explosion, The Spottire, now quite vertical, must have been the elment shuve He ared directly above
Praise neve
1 could've fold
War
he last speed. and cleanes with his silk on. he pressed
hit by return Are.
when He was metines,
hin wind. of his dying career
with oil was overed No crossing out over the cost of reta +1.
him." France at "bought feel" after a after a combat, Curated Buder
pa ticularly ferer dog fight when opened Use on Vuy al way but with perfect his Spitre was brickcled by the windscreen
the Spitfire
The plane wes hit glove, hall-rolled light nak tug of the loop and re- and Ken opened the tund in case searching the another bomber.
A aut The whole he had to balc
ammull comed leved dught FERGETSKA 10 was carried out with exquneato sitill, and to show that
was a thike The pilot I' peated the perforinance, And so Use local aerobatic kaut
CUT OFF
ALEK
*m
ht
4.
piece of shrapnel the open coctopil
tore through
severed
the bridge of his goggles, which fell across his faces and ended up the Hour of the evkinit,
Later, over ten in the garden outside the officers' mess. Ken talked of is narrow exope He fhgh'-lieutenant furtard Rent a puntomime act. Instead of sending cair shivers down our hack hem us into
ods suvel as neelt try it klek: During a a dog-
JALLIS ist lungater
ao wa run of them the buy exprience
Edea to hark bom $1
"You can't
of us and the Miscarriamatty, We were nicky in the lining
aprovad
051 Aber kay Spublice way The squailis ni had several wanks
deberely a l 12 which to settle down before wacked-lakang spun, but the full fury of the 1941 figal s
1 berd
season broke around ... tuur dat we loved Boy come
1
me he Pphet has dad y Plat it upande stoy date stalowy dier
Spures
The
Meine fistufis
daew
63 to water the end, but cut poly had srese de Prasonable feld, and get bar crossed the hedge he rolled back to Bant attainde and marked the Spitfire
into
Then
MOODY
the ground he was moody and sometimes urly. Most his brother prints did not un- his strange, brooding, festas
one-wolf charnelei.
s
One day someone asked if he tura family He said they had been killed in one of the Man- enester blitzn. and the subject was never mentaard aga. Bul people understood that
veled # great mulines Erberty, an lng nung 1 erat lu even The sec It: for his Dwi
y
302 1[
וי
nd highly
In killer
dangeriais
7418 The ten
an bounds. Trees mogel 1ght Beintel To bobter our meagre #got
He set the port delinees The day pilets en ver Lond-sa had thy at night.
Spitfire st
engine on flies and remorselessly the bomber to ground patrolled ver the target area
ipvel anch weje sepprated by Sch!!
Chatham The Somewhere het Fright intervals The Hass
Beinel switched on a light artef flak gung only had freedom fre wel
Inwest attempted a crash landing. below
"assisted the altitude.
In own words he Jsselies with shart burst."
BAD SCARES an excellent wheel-up landing
of the wreek THE grOUB. Í He stepped Citat
THE unscathed and returned to squadron
Spam
Gibraltar
Irmed the squadron
tal
As it went
controller, we man
he screamed
by
13 the rudin like a demented Later, accompanied see the other squadron pilots, he went
erbal tis**
coller! Twibe to
kem Souvenir He wanted one of the
Heinkel's
the maki
be
were assured, {21
grow orga engined Beaufighters were well clear of
Ind cor patrod
fore Christanın All through that nevertheless, 115 Wonder than South Yorkshire unfortunate clashes Sandron trained hard.
I' Theye
guns to hang on the sene wall of his rom977).
The maly undamaged gun wit with the only dreadfully mixed up when the remains of one of the German
squadron Whts were a few isolated combals, and supposed to operate
Douglas Bader, the legless pilot, "was already a legend and a hero when I first met him a few days after reporting to 616 Squadron,"
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ד 4
A lighting man off duty. Today Johnnie is Deputy Director of Tactical Opera. tions at the Air Ministry. Here he is with his wife Paula at his home in Norfolk. He met her at a wartime party in Norwich, when she was working for the Auxiliary Fire Service,
I had my that "squirt" at а moon would give Us fair gunners. Unmoved, he went German bomber over the North chance of seeing eormy bomb- about the gruesome task Sen. where we patrolled con- era but we flew on some dirty cuflecting his prize. stantly protecting evastal con- nights and were sometimes badly On another occasion he voys. As the months
frightened in the process. When up a bomber and pieces
Went
by
the intron came together
u happy, aggressive team.
Then one day in the last week
of February Billy Burton walk- ed briskly Into our dispersal hut with the welcome news that we were to move in the south and the fighting.
I
JOB DONE
01
blew
of it
removed
as my Spitike roared into the dark stained his Hurricane, He re-
tilky I was oppressed by the fused to have these strange loneliness of my solilary and for a long time they re-
light.
mained on his aircraft for all But there WAS one fighter to sce-symbols of his own pilut who flew a Hurricane at private war, of his ferocity and night and achieved outstanding his great hairod.
success. This was the fearless Stevens of 151 Squadron al Wittering. und make special mention of him in this chronicle of day lighting because he, like us, flew a single-scaler and had none of the scientifle alds avail- able to the Beaughters.
HAD heard much about
Tangmere, I knew it to be a pleasant, sunny airdeid which crouched
font of the at the South Downs. In Tangmere
world
LAST FLIGHT
E was decorated with the "D.s.o. and promoted. Не left
Wittering and formed а special unit as Manston. Their
to carry task was
the night WHIT Steve battle
to Europe. These were WASH was a free-lance commercial called name, for her fighter squadrons pliot. Sometimes he flew news were the most dangerous
Intruder operations and
and tind already achieved great distinction. Now, I thought papers to Paris and sometimes highly specialised of all the to that tradition he droned his Rapide across the varied tasks ever carried out by
our Was on honoured
we will add and gain a repitiation own squadron.
Before the
for our sky do exercise our searchlights, our single-seat fighters.
Later he used to say that he He would patrol the enemy was paid far more for flying in airfields 10 cut down the the searchlights in peacetime bombers when they took off, than for operating in the Bak heavily laden with destruction. He would carry out his soltiary during the war?
patrols on the far side of North Sea. Ho would be far beyond radio contact and have
What a difference there was between the subdited group of men I had joined RİX months earlier and the spirited squadron which now returned to the battlefront. Billy Burton had
HAM FISTED
the
no aids other than his own
done his job with a shrewd IE was not a good pilot. His mixture of firmness and under flight-commander described uncanny skill and determina- landing. And in this he had him as "ham-asted" because he tion. He would have to contend been helped by Ken Holden broke several Hurricanes our bluff, tough senior night he arrived on the squadron. But with enemy aight agters, with when with the weather, with the flak, commander,
Ken, a thick-set Yorkshireman he was a clever pilot. His peace the searchlights and with from Doncaster and an original time experiences had made him long two-way sen crossing. The Auxiliary member of the squadron, was a great deal older than the rest of us.
AL Arst I had thought he was Inclined to be dour and cautious, His down-to-carth North Coun- try wisdom tended to frustrate
younger chaps, who thought
we knew all the answer and were dend keen to get into fight. But Ken was pure gold right through.
the
a shrewd bad-weather fler and odds were heavily against him. he could get his Hurricane bačk Such hazards, coupled with a to Wittering under the most complete disregard for his own atrocious weather conditions. safely, meant that one end was
Steve Invented itis technique to get a "visual"
own inevitable. On the flight before on his last he landed just after six
return.
an enemy bomber. Hla aids o'clock. Ile was in the air, agdin were the dat bursts, the cones within two hours and flew
to of searchlights and the fires on Holland. This time he did not the ground.
Later 4ho Germans He always flew towards the found his shattered" Hurricane, greatest concentration
our His grave is but a short distance flak because ho know
that from that of angther outstands
an enemy bomber. When he
of
GOGGLES OFF somewhere in the barrage was ing airman, Guy Gibeon.
AN
Of Stevens I. E. Bates has |
ND I now now that some sighed, the Hun he closed to suid: "His was the sky-yours is A of us who lived through the point-blank range and blasted it the earth because of him." wor owe our necks to his out of the sky.
thoroughness and the lessons ho
taught us. His favourite.precept: "Remember this, "you" - young Jads, you can't buy experience.
Ken certainly had some rugged experiences on his own account Land" he used, to: enjoy :: relating
them with a wealth of Zumour. and mima
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