In their own words...

[bobbysocks]

Lt Col Harry harrington USAF Retd joined the RCAF in 1940 got his wings dec 41 i n Mar 43 came on strength of USAAC but remained with 410 sqn RCAF this is one part of an article out an old Airforce (RCAF Assoc)magazine at the time of this story its Nov 44
"410 squadron had by Nov 44 moved from Amiens Glissy to Lille Vendeville joining 409 squadron . November was a quiet month until the 25th . That night Harrington had been patrolling for about an hour with nothing to report . Then quite suddenly he and his navigator F/L DG Tongue recieved vectors on to a target which he and Tongue identified as a JU88g . Harrington utilised his standard attack manoeuvre and shortly obtained strikes on the enemys a/c cockpit engines and wings the a/c exploded and crashed to the ground . Immediately after the pair was vectored on to a second a/c and while stalking this adversary it was determined that they were being stalked by a 3rd a/c after 10 minutes of violent evasive action the second Junkers fell prey to Harringtons marksmanship recieving strikes on cockpit engines and wing roots. after a half roll hard turn to the left looping and stalling the enemy a/c ended up in a inverted spin which ended with a spectacular crash and explosion . climbing out of this second engagement Harrington again encountered enemy a/c 2 this time and one was immediatly engaged with the same results the Ju88 caught fire and descended below cloud and exploded with his ammunition spent and another enemy night fighter in the vicinity Harrington elected to RTB icredibly the entire action took 16 minutes the Hat trick raised his an Tongues score to seven confirmed kills and one unconfirmed . As such Harrington distinguished himself as the highest scoring nightfighter ace of the USAAF


First air victory of WWII

At about 7:00 a.m., (other sources say 5:30 a.m.), two P-11c's moved onto the runway. Just after take off, at about 300 meters altitude, the Polish fighters were suddenly attacked by a pair of German Ju 87B dive-bombers, from I/StG2 "Immelmann". Uffz. Frank Neubert , piloting a "Stuka" coded "T6+GK", sucessfully shot at Medwecki and scored probably the first air victory of WWII. "Jedenastka" ("Eleventh" - popular Polish name of P-11) fell, and commander of the "City of Krakow" Regiment was killed. Gnys was now also under attack, but a few seconds later he shot at a "Stuka" piloted by Lt. Branderburg. From the German aircraft there appeared some smoke, but it managed to escape into the clouds and returned to Nieder-Ellguth Airfield.

CR 42

"After taking off at 15:00 on 30 January [1941], Flying Officers Ernest Mason and Thomas Patterson of 274 Squadron, arrived over an Italian airfield, which they identified as Barce [but probably was Benina] at 16:45. Here they discovered a CR.42 on the starboard beam and 2000 feet below, which they chased down to 6000 feet. The Italian pilot fought back tenaciously, hitting Patterson’s Hurricane (P3765), who was forced to retreat with shrapnel wound in his left arm and was taken to hospital the next day. The Italian then started a series of head on attacks on Mason (P3723), who recalled:

This CR 42 was very tough. We kept doing head on attacks where we rush at each other head-on until point-blank range and then shoot past each other. Usually very successful. But this fellow wouldn’t go down. On the fourth attack we were rushing each other, each firing. But this time he didn’t pull out but came straight on. I pulled up instinctively and as he passed underneath my wing I felt a crash and a bump. I thought we had collided. I had a glimpse of him going straight on and burning.
I now realised that I had been hit and not collided (…)

Mason had to turn back, he was slightly wounded in the side, his plane had been badly shot about, but he was able to return to Gazala and land at 17:45. Back at base, he claimed this CR 42 as confirmed.
The RAF duo had run into Sgt. Mario Turchi of the 368a Squadriglia. The young Sergeant had taken off for a standing patrol over Benina when at 16:20 he was attacked by two Hurricanes. Under the eyes of his Squadriglia mates and of his temporary CO (Lt. Giuseppe Zuffi), Turchi was able to quickly disengage from the first Hawker [Patterson] and then attacked the second one, finally colliding with it [Mason was right in his first impression] loosing the wingtip of the upper wing and suffering some airscrew cuts in the lower wing. His last opponent was seen to abandon the fight, leaving a track of smoke and claimed damaged. The Italian pilot landed his Fiat (MM6255), which was classified RS, being welcomed like a hero by his Squadriglia comrades that had witnessed his successful combat.
...
Turchi was awarded with a Medaglia d’argento al Valor Militare for this combat."


unseen help

There was even a case of eleven twenty-millimeter cannon shells penetrating the fuel tanks of a B-17 flown by the 379th Bomb Group without exploding. Inside one of the shells, taken by technical intelligence for examination,
was a note in Czech that read 'This is all we can do for you now.'

This was in Winged Victory, talking about the high amount of duds that the Germans were using mainly due to slave labor. What are the odds? That's a pretty neat little story.

lady be good ala italiano

On 21 july 1960, Gian Luca Desio and Giovanni Vacirca, technicians of the CORI (geological prospects company), that were 580 km south of Bengazi, heading for Cufra, at 8 km from the Gialo-Giarabub track, discovered the body of a man, perfectly preserved under the sand.
He dressed an italian flight suit, with him there were a big compass taken from the instruments of an italian bomber, a 1/2 liter empty water tank, a screwdriver, a signal gun with three used rockets and a bunch of keys marked MM23881.
The body was that of Marshall Giovanni Romanini, gunner of the torpedo bomber SM 79 MM23881 that taken off from Berka in the late evening of 21 april 1941 and never turned back.
On that day the Italian torpedo bombers were employed in a series of spaced out attacks at dusk counter a british convoy near Crete. The MM23881, was commanded by Cpt. Oscar Cimolini that, with his crew, arrived in Africa only two days before. The aircraft has taken off a middle our after that of Lt. Robone. Robone arrived over the convoy at 19,25, badly damaged the tanker "British Lord" (the merchants "Bankura" and "Urania" were lost due to aerial attacks that day) and landed safely at 21,30. He testified to have heard AA fire from the convoy when he was coming back, so he thought Cimolini attacked the convoy only few minutes after him, but after that there were no more signs ot the MM23881, for 19 years.
After the recovery of the body of Romanini, the search for the aircraft and for the rest of the crew resumed, but only after two month, and still by case, the aircraft was discovered 80 km south of him (and several hundreds of Km out of the maximum range of the aircraft) by the technicians of AGIP (Italian oil company).
The aircraft, apart for the fabric covering, was in nearly perfect conditions, with even the windscreen intact and without signs of enemy fire. Subsequent studies estabilished that it landed with the engines functioning and the undercarriage open (that was broken at impact)
Still on the pilot's seat there were the body of Cpt.Cimolini, with a broken shouder. The bodies of the others members of the crew and some empty bottles of water were few meters off the plane.
What happened first than the landing is only a matter of hypotesis. The more probable is that, returning from the attack, in the dark, Cimolini has misjudjed the intensity of the wind to calculate the drift, so lacked the airstrip, was lost in the desert and finally, running out of fuel, decided to land, but this explanation supposes the failure of the radio. It's difficult to estabilish if the radio was or not functioning at 19 years of distance, but the AGIP technicians were able to switch it on with only a summary polishing.
What appened after is easy to immagine. The crew decided to send one of them in search for rescue, hoping to find a track. Romanini, the younger of the crew, was equipped with the compass, the signals and the keys (probably to permit an easier identification in case of death) and headed north.
He covered 80 km of distance in the desert, carring the heavy compass, first to die at 8 km from salvation. Probably, in his last night (perhaps hearing the vehicles over the track) he fired the rockets, but none saw him.