1956-11-10 — Page 7

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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