I found this report in the Telegraph very moving.
The two Spitfires were at 10,000ft when they spotted their prey.
Below the planes from RAF’s 332 Squadron on that afternoon in April 1945 was a large German armoured patrol vehicle.
In the lead aircraft, Lieutenant Rolf Kolling – a refugee from Nazi-occupied Norway, and a veteran pilot at the age of 23 – did not need asking twice. Supported by his wingman and compatriot, the new boy Eigel Stigset in Spitfire ML407, he swooped.
Last Friday, at a small airfield in Essex, a 91-year old grandfather walked slightly unsteadily towards a Mark IX Spitfire.
Mr Kolling had returned for one last time to the wartime home of 332 Squadron.
No longer agile enough to leap onto the wing and clamber into the cockpit, he lifted a slightly shaky hand and touched the fuselage of Spitfire ML407.
It reunited the two surviving veterans of what had turned out to be a historic combat mission – the last flown by the RAF’s Norwegian wing in the Second World War.
“Even now,” he said, “I think about those times. Every night.
“Before I left home, I told myself that this would be the last time I came back to North Weald. I am very, very glad I came here.”
His appearance marked the start of celebrations at the airfield this weekend to mark the 70th anniversary of the wartime association between North Weald and Norway.
From the summer of 1942, Norwegian pilots flew from the base. On the afternoon of April 21, 1945, Lieutenant Kolling had no idea of the significance of the sortie.
He and Stigset opened up with their cannons at 500ft and about 400 miles per hour. They did not hang around. “I don’t know exactly how much damage we did,” remembered Mr Kolling. “But there was no way anyone was driving that vehicle again.”
After nearly two hours in the air, they were back at Schijndel, their temporary Dutch base. The next day the pilots were taken out of the front line - first to Britain, then a month later to liberated Norway.
. . .
He peered into the rear cockpit of Spitfire ML407, intrigued that it was converted into a two-seater after the war, by the Irish Air Corps, which used it as a training aircraft until 1960.
It was bought in 1979 by Nick Grace, a design engineer and amateur pilot, who restored it to flying condition. After Mr Grace died in a car crash in 1988, his widow Carolyn took over, learning how to fly the Spitfire.
The couple’s son Richard, 28, flew ML407 from its base in Suffolk to North Weald for the occasion.
“It’s great to be able to do this,” said Mr Grace. “It’s important to make sure they know that people care.”
Major General Finn Hannestad, the head of the Royal Norwegian Air Force, looked on approvingly.
“It is an absolute privilege to be able to bring him and veterans like him back to North Weald, to where they started everything, to our roots as an air force.”
There's more at the link.
If that doesn't bring a little moisture to your eyes and a lump to your throat . . . I'm truly sorry for you.
Peter
God bless 'em, there are few like those of The Greatest Generation. We were blessed to know them, and now there are so few left among us.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Peter. Wet eyes seem to be a growing concern for this Vietnam vet. I Urked when I read “Even now,” he said, “I think about those times. Every night.
ReplyDeleteTC
A few years ago, I was in conversation with a younger person than my 62 years of age, about the Allied bombing of Germany, his opinion was that it was not justified.
ReplyDeleteI replied, "The Nazis had to be destroyed, simple as that, the war had to be stopped, had the Allies been defeated, and England occupied, the war would have continued, a new dark age begun, and the destruction and slaughter made unstoppable".
"The war stopped with Allied Victory, simple as that".
The look of realisation that dawned was profound.
Their courage and sacrifice bought a future, and futures beyond number.
Is too much made of them, as some seem to believe?.
No, that is just not possible, ever.