COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
an SS Headquarters which was being dive bombed almost nonstop,
Killy's little party took refuge in a ditch, where they were joined by
a further five, very demoralised, German soldiers.
Killy, as he subsequently described it, turned on the propaganda
machine and persuaded all the Huns to surrender, and pose as his
escort, until they reached the allied lines. After further adventures,
which included bluffing an SS officer, stealing a lorry, and ending up
with an even larger 'escort 1 which had swollen to twenty seven, Killy
finally made contact with an American unit and hitch hiked his way
back to B3 - just nine days late. A valiant effort part of a long and
courageous tour for which he received the DSO.
The sortie on which Killy went down was an armed recce with
bombs against the rear areas of the Mortain salient. Led by Bill
Switzer, commanding 'A 1 Flight, it proved frustrating beyond words.
The search area was surprisingly untouched by war. Yet only a few
miles to the west, where the ground attack squadrons had just
delivered a decisive blow against the panzers, the countryside was
devastated and strewn with the debris of battle.
We tracked back and forth across the gentle rolling wooded
contours. But the Hun was lying low after his battering on the previous
day and so Bill brought us down and down, trailing his coat, until we
were less than a thousand feet above the ground. Eight Typhoons, in
two sections of four, cruising in battle formation - asking for trouble -
until Killy was caught by a sudden burst of flak and called out that he
was heading home and an imminent forced landing.
For almost half an hour more we sweated it out, hunched in the
heat of our cockpits under a cloudless sky, willing Killy to make it,
until shortage of fuel brought an end to the fruitless search.
Frustration turned to anger when we were told to bring our bombs
home. Yet Bill was probably right. An astute enemy commander might
well have pulled his forces back during the night, after the disaster at
Mortain, in order to reduce the risk of encirclement. And we had seen
absolutely nothing to attack. Better to save our bombs for another
time.
A few days later I was flying number two to Bill. It was a dawn
show, and he was trailing his coat again, low to the south of Caen.
Suddenly the tracer came hosing up and he was hit by the very first
burst and started to burn. I shouted at him to bale out, but there was
no sign of a parachute, and his aircraft dived vertically into the middle
of a large wood where it exploded on impact.
50