Nightfighting in Mosquitos - Rayne D. Schultz, Group Captain (ret'd)

what's your finest memory from your entire aviation career surviving the trip on the 10th of February 1944 we caught up to it about 6070 miles out over the North Sea the cloud and it was a German and he was going home and flat out and it was a different model it was either a 388 Junkers 88 or 188 and my navigator who was a real enthusiast on on information like they said after we shot it and it was in flames and going down he said let's get in closer so I can give more information to the intelligence people when we got on the ground that was the stupidest thing I ever did in my life I moved on in and as we was getting close and the airplane was completely in flames but they made our gunner was still in it in his turret on this airplane and I saw the turret moving around to come bear it on me and broke as hard as I could to the left and he started at about 6 inches from one wingtip and finished up 6 inches from the other wingtip but 30 some rounds of a 13 millimeter into my airplane 2 or 3 through the cockpit my navigator had perspex into his face and things and then one winter we sat side by side one of the bullets went right through between the two of us amongst other things well it both engines were badly shot up one of them the piston was shot right out of it on the right-hand engine and I was going to crash land called the radio was still working at the big bomber crashed stripping in Norfolk and they said we can't take you because the airport is littered with bombers coming back from a raid so we tried and we went on to Bradwell Bay which was about another 50 60 miles with this airplane in this shape and we landed and the one thing that was most interesting on that and when I went put on the brakes there weren't any brakes one of the rounds had gone through the air bottles in the back so I didn't hear so I grabbed looked in the middle of the airfield and there was the airplane just dripping fuel and all arrested never caught fire and that without a question of a delq was the most interesting one during the war I take it then when I asked what your favorite aircraft is you would say mosquito Oh without any reservation what were some of the characteristics of the aircraft of the mosquito that you couldn't remember everything was good I prayed you just beyond belief honor for instance your 104 there I flew at second last plate before it came in here and I got it up to just about sixteen hundred miles an hour north of here and I like to the 104 but not not not in this class not at all he it with this airplane it was quite forgiving in my opinion now other people thought otherwise on the mosquito but as far as I'm concerned I've let over a thousand hours on it and those are real hours because they didn't clock you there until your wheels were on the way up airborne and when you touched the runway they cut the clock off because that saved them money and replaced the engines etc and during the war and that's still building up the hours wasn't easy you couldn't count taxing time which is something did people nowadays don't know about how many types of aircraft have you flown somewhere around 40 well yeah that's not counting marks a typical briefing before a mission so your navigators off briefing and you're you're getting a briefing that kumusta didn't the night fighter air side of the game at all there's hardly any were on readiness you knew that when you recalled if you had a time it was a specific time you just took off and then the GCI is the ground controlled radar would vectored you where they wanted you to and we were limited in the North Sea because of the secrecy of the equipment or so they thought we couldn't go as to certain town and we just went back and forth on patrol now that's quite different if we were on intruding missions there were there we were briefed and where we're to go in and what what to expect in the way of enemy activity and that sort of thing but I didn't do a great number of those at mine were nearly all night fighter and so it was on readiness all the time

Channel: Canada Aviation and Space Museum

Views: 189,602

Rating: 4.9115577 out of 5

Keywords: de Havilland Mosquito, nightfighting, Second World War, Canadian aviation history

Id: 3DO-6EjmdkQ

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2011