Posted on 12/24/2022 10:01:11 AM PST by DFG
Looking back on it all more than 80 years later, Group Captain John 'Paddy' Hemingway starts to chuckle: 'I just wondered what would happen next — and luckily the right thing happened next!'
That is one way of recalling an experience so terrifying that most of us would probably have nightmares to our dying day.
One moment, on the afternoon of August 26, 1940, Pilot Officer Hemingway, aged 21, was flying his RAF Hawker Hurricane head-on towards a fleet of German Dornier bombers bound for London in broad daylight.
The next, he took a bullet in the wing — then another in the engine. 'Bang! Bang! Smoke and oil everywhere,' he recalls. 'I thought I was on fire.'
He pulled open the hood and bailed out, though his problems were far from over. He was at 18,000 ft and also well aware that some German pilots were shooting enemy parachutists.
So he took an instant decision to plummet to the tops of the clouds, at just 8,000 ft, before pulling his cord with seconds to spare.
Though the force of that initial descent would give him terrible sinus trouble for days afterwards, his plan worked and he landed safely on farmland next to The Barge pub at Pitsea Marshes in Essex.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I would be better if he used authentic RAF Banter....
"Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie."
Pubs are like magnets to Englishmen. If he had been Irish, he would have landed on the roof!
That you, Biggles?
I’m sorry old man, your banter seems a bit off
Banter’s not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy.
Everything's tiggety-boo, and Bob's your uncle.
Wow! His story should be made into a movie. But, of course, unless they can find a way to make this hero and England look bad none of the Pedowood crowd would be interested on making such a movie.
This guy was in the thick of it:
May 11, 1940: Crash lands in the Netherlands; walks for three days back to base.
August 18, 1940: Hit off the Essex coast and rescued from the sea.
August 26, 1940: Plummets 10,000ft before parachuting onto Essex marshland.
May 13, 1941: Parachute fails to open properly — he lands in a dung heap in the garden of the poet Walter de la Mare.
July 29, 1942: Heading to London to receive his DFC from the King, his RAF bomber crashes during take-off.
April 23, 1945: Bails out over enemy territory in Italy, chased and shot at by Germans, but led to safety by a six-year-old girl.
CO: "Damn Paddy, you've had five already..."
This airman definitely had an angel on his shoulder.
Good thing his planes never had co-pilots, with his luck with the planes, doubtful he’d be able to find anyone to fly with him........LOL!
Hate to be a spoilsport but he got shot down 5 times? Was that normal? Or was he not very good at dogfighting?
When we went to the USS Yorktown with the Cub Scouts a few years ago, my teenage daughter was looking at the photographs and asked, “Why was everyone in World War II so CUTE?!” If she saw the pictures of Group Captain Paddy and his chums, she might ask again.
I have a photo on the refrigerator of my late father and some of his shipmates from 1969. They’re cute, too.
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