In “Clouds of Fear” F/O Roger Hall DFC gives a graphic account of a Hurricane pilot being shot while parachuting and Hall apparently scored two kills without shooting as he drove the offending 109 and wingman into the drink. Was this ever confirmed and do we know who was the Hurricane pilot? It Appeared to be July-August 1940 but there are few dates in the narrative.
Cheers and thanks
By: Dakkg651 - 24th August 2006 at 13:14
Ah, you’re right, it was Nicolson, not Lacey that I should have said. I believe the soldier was in the Home Guard, from what I read.
Probably a Captain of the name of Mainwaring>
By: Beetle2 - 24th August 2006 at 12:53
From Halls account of the incident, the Hurricane pilot did not survive and neither did the two German pilots. Related to this was the occasion on 20 march 1942 when Douggie Leggo (249 Squadron) had his parachute collapsed by a 109 which had already strafed him. He died too. (Lord David Douglas-Hamilton described the event in Blackwoods Magazine originally )
By: Dave Homewood - 24th August 2006 at 12:13
Ah, you’re right, it was Nicolson, not Lacey that I should have said. I believe the soldier was in the Home Guard, from what I read.
By: Dakkg651 - 24th August 2006 at 10:45
If you have read Geoff Wellum’s book ‘First Light’, it seems that James Nicholson, after baling out of burning Hurricane, was shot and badly injured in the legs and buttocks by a British Soldier just before landing.
As if he didn’t have enough to cope with!
By: Dave Homewood - 24th August 2006 at 10:08
Interesting. The only pilots I have heard of being shot at were Bob Spurdle (who told me about the event in person, having bailed out after a high speed divefrom an Me109 broke his Spitfire’s wings off, the German tried to shoot him in the harness as he floated down.
The other I read of was Ginger Lacey, who was shot by a Home Guard who assumed he was a German! He was peppered with shot but survived.
Sign In
August 24, 2006 at 9:41 am