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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0441.PDF
FEBRUARY 26TH, 1942 F L l[G HT 171 Cleaning the 4.5m. twin-turreted dual-purpose guns on an aircraft carrier. A Kittyhawk Victory : T.S.R.'s and Italian Warships : Bombing in Sumatra Japanese Air Raids on Darwin LAST week the excitement aroused by the fall of Singapore and the -* escape of the German warships through the Channel prevented us from alluding to a really great air battle over the Libyan desert. Terrific credit must go to the American fighter type used by the British and Australians, namely, the Curtiss Kittyhawk with Allison water-cooled engine.. This machine is a consider able improvement on the Tomahawk, which has also done very well in the Middle East. The British formation Was composed of 18 Kittyhawks drawn from two squadrons, one R.A.F. and the other R.A.A.F. They came upon a mixed lot of Axis air craft, numbering about 30 machines, just about to strafe our ground troops. The Kittyhawks dived upon them and slew them. The whole fight only lusted five minutes, and one of our pilots counted six enemy machines hitting the ground in the same num ber of seconds. He could also see our men on the ground throwing their hats into the air in exultation as they saw the would-be killers thus killed off. The Kittyhawks shot down five Me 109s, 14 Macchi 200s, and one Hreda 65. All the other enemy puchines, including Macchi 200s and 202s, Me 109s, and Ju 87s, were damaged. Every one of our pilots bagged something, and the only damage suffered by our men was a cannon shot in the tail of one of the Australians. Obviously most of the enemy pilots were Italians, but there may have been some Germans among them. The morale of the Regia Aero- nautica will hardly be improved by this severe defeat. The Axis, which in this case must mean the Italian Navy, has met with another nasty rebuff in the Mediter ranean. Although the usual British route to the Middle East is round the Cape, there are occasions when urgent convoys have to ||| face the dangers of the direct route. Of course the enemy air recon naissance quickly re ports the approach of such a convoy. Such a case occurred on Feb ruary 13th, and the first boastful but highly mendacious Italian re ports of what happened made the public a little anxious, well accus tomed a s everybody now is to Italian methods of publicity. The operation lasted for three days, at the end of which our Ad miralty published the NAVAL NOMADS: Fairey Albacores of the Fleet Air Arm flying over the Libyan desert. true facts. The worst thing was that two of the merchantmen were so dis abled by air attack that they had to be sunk by our own forces, but the loss of their cargoes was the only loss sus tained on our side, except for super ficial damage to one of H.M. ships. The Italians sent both surface war- [\V)J><S
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