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Modern Fossil wrote:Its not been Skipped Doc. The Bank still has it in storage
F
Doc Lightning wrote:Modern Fossil wrote:Its not been Skipped Doc. The Bank still has it in storage
F
Glad to hear it. I reckon they'll display it at Head Office in Edinburgh once the renovations are complete.
How did you hear about it being in storage?
The first enemy aircraft to fall on British soil in the Second World War was a Heinkel He-111, which was shot down at Haddington, East Lothian, on 29 November. The aircraft was originally attacked by Flying Officer Archie McKellar of 602 Squadron, who was then interrupted by the arrival of three Spitfires from 603 Squadron. Although argument rages to this day as to which squadron was the victor, the 'kill' was credited to McKellar.
The Battle of Britain, which took place between July and November of 1940, was the largest air battle in history. The Royal Air Force prevailed through pilots who fought fearlessly to defend their country and people. During this battle, RAF pilots achieved high victory numbers while flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, as they were given the ace status. Among these aces was Squadron Leader Archie Ashmore McKellar, a Scottish native of small stature (5ft. 3” tall) who was a fearless pilot that took the skies during the Battle of Britain.
McKellar was credited with a total 17 victories, 3 shared, 5 probable and another 3 damaged during his career (5 Bf109E’s in a day on October 7th). Most people might remember his famous aircraft numbered UP-A P3308. With that machine Mckellar downed 13.5 airplanes, 4 probable and 1 damaged between August 15th and October 7th. This gave him the highest tally of victories scored by any Hurricane pilot during the Battle of Britain. McKellar passed away when he was shot down near Addisham while flying Hurricane UP-M, V6879.
During his diving attack on the vessels in the Forth, the cockpit canopy of Hauptmann Pohles Ju-88 flew off, leaving the four crewmembers open to the elements. In his embarrassingly exposed position, Pohle climbed away northwards to observe the efforts of his unit. Almost instantly, .303 shells began pounding his aircraft from behind, 602 Squadron had entered the battle. Pohle struggled to shake off his Glaswegian assailants, Flt Lts George Pinkerton and Archie McKellar, who chased the Junkers out to sea. The stricken bomber plunged into the water three miles east of Crail, nearly colliding with a coaster. Pohle was recovered, bleeding from facial wounds suffered in the crash, the other three crewmembers were dead on impact.
Archie McKellar, my leader, decided to attach the big formation, so we turned and climbed into the sun. At that moment I ran out of petrol and by the time I had turned on to my reserve tank Archie was 200 years in front of me. We kept climbing until we were about 4,000 feet above the enemy and directly overhead. Then we turned on our backs and dived to attack....................................................
We had a wizard champagne party in the mess last night. The whole of A Flight was unlucky, they didn't see a thing but our flight sent seven down and damaged six.
R E Jones
I said about not hanging around and McKellar, who eventually became our squadron commander; a chap called Squadron Leader McKellar, who got about twenty plus to his credit during the Battle of Britain. Great character and fiery little Scotsman but a great, great chap… He got three in one day, in fact on this raid that old Churchill lead us into because Archie (Editor's note: Archie McKellar, 21 victories) fired at them and hit the middle one. I forgot to mention this, of these 111s and one hit the other so he got three. He was very lucky, but anyway he got twenty altogether. And one day in November the 109s decided to come over carrying bombs, high level, not escorted and just being nuisance raids to bring us up into the sky. And this was on the 1st November 1940 and we were up and we saw a crowd of these and we were way above them and so Archie said "Come on, here we go down", so we went down but we were much too fast, the dive I know why, we went down like 'that' and the 109s saw us and we overshot them on the way down. A quick burst, they turned and were gone; we overshot. Well, once you do that, I mean, you've had it, you go home, but I did anyway. But Archie being what he was, he thought "No, no, I'm going to chase these so and so's" and that's, unfortunately, was the end of Archie. He went on, on his own, didn't look around, chasing this chap and the last thing was, they saw him going straight into a field in Kent. It's a lesson that I suppose you should've learnt; you just don't take too many chances.
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