Lifetime seconds – The longest period of time that I spent in a Spitfire was actually only in seconds. These seconds lead up to the opportune time. The opportune time was awaited while a buddy, across the way in a wide, line abreast formation, was telling me to sit tight as there was a ME 109 coming down on my tail and the buddy would tell me when to break at the opportune time or second; Break too soon and the ME 109 could break inside and put his sights out in front of me and on the other hand break too late, and well ........ . Those seconds were longgggggg.
A typical return – Usually in a beehive, or any other dogfight, it was every man for himself and when the action took place over France each pilot had to get back out of France on his own. On the way out, one always looked for something of the enemy at which one could take a crack, such as, railway engines, railway stations, railway switches, military convoys, soldiers, boats sitting at docks, radio towers, and so on.
On one of my typical flights out of France, I spied, and I knew that they hadn’t seen me, many Nazi soldiers standing in a type of formation on the platform of a small railway station. I quickly hit for ground level and sneaked, parallel to the railway tracks, to finally mow down, in a matter of seconds, the lined-up soldiers. I was so intent on laying my sights on the platform that I was not aware of cutting either telephone wires or stay wires, but when I landed back at Westhampnett there were lengths of wire clinging to, and trailing from, both mainplanes.
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