WWII Kiwi airmen our 'best and brightest'

By Andrew Stone

New Zealand Herald - Saturday May 31, 2014

On the 70th anniversary of D-Day a book seeks to win recognition for young flyers who bravely took the fight to the enemy

Ray Tait's plane was hit badly during the bombing at the Ostefeld benzol refinery in the Ruhr. The picture was taken during the bombing raid in early 1945.

Flak ripped into Marty Kilpatrick's fully-laden Lancaster bomber as the Kiwi pilot kept it on a steady course for the Ruhr Valley refinery.
Shrapnel destroyed the radio beside navigator Ray Tait, covered his work table with jagged metal pieces and tore into his parachute harness.
The port inner engine stalled, then the outer Rolls-Royce Merlin unit on the starboard side caught fire. Ray Tait, now 90 and among the dwindling number of surviving New Zealand airmen from World War II, recalls the unflappable skipper Kilpatrick pressing on to the target, a fuel plant in the industrial heart of Germany.

The crew dropped their deadly load from 20,000 feet and turned away from the synthetic fuel factory at Osterfeld. With the crippled engines feathered and more than two hours to run back to their base in Cambridgeshire, Tait knew getting home would be a close-run thing.
"Marty was pretty confident," Tait remarked. " Nothing upset him." The beaten-up Lancaster, down to 1000 feet and lumbering along, put down as astonished ground crew scattered in fear of a crash.

For his nerveless flying on the operation in early 1945, Kilpatrick earned a Distinguished Flying Cross. Tait's honour came a little later, as the war wound down.
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