[Many Souffan]

Dear Mr Arnaud Gillet

Why are you so angry? With all respects I have for you, you seem’s to me, like a child who make a caprice, because he doesn’t have his toys… Sorry, “originals documents giving details of Henschel 126 losses on 14th May 1940”

Firstly, the “original documents” are and will stay always in the Bundesarchiv. I have only a copy with synthetic infos, because a Serious German Searcher spent a lot of time for him and he accepted friendly to give me some infos, not all, when I will publish them, I will give only his name…

Secondly I fear nothing… I remember, the motto of RAF 501Sqn. But more seriously, why I should be afraid? I am sure of my sources, German, British, and French.
Mr Arnaud Gillet, Why your 3 books are published since a long time now, but you didn’t give your sources. Now you write on this forum of gentlemen, Please, give us simply your sources… We wait for them.

Thirdly, why you speak always those documents are public and free? Here we don’t speak about money, but about the respect of a searcher, a lone wolf searcher who spent so much time, we speak here, the vivid memories of German, French, and British pilots and what they did.

The Berlin wall fell 20 years ago. So all those people in Germany are now free to speak... I am sure this historian will be pleased to help me in my researches. He could be also a friend...

Well I don’t know, if it possible to be a friend with you, why not? It is a question of feeling, a question of private choice, a question of trust, of confidence, a question of free will… I like no, I love to write, I know also, because I am by nature suspicious, to read between lines. I am sorry Ruy, that you don’t know the little nuances of the French language. If you knew, you should have a new dimension of the writings of Mr Arnaud Gillet against me.

It would be easy to stay in my cavern of silence without answering to Mr Arnaud Gillet, but I prefer to have a confrontation not a clash, to share my knowledge, to give him the light of the truth, maybe Mr Arnaud will show after that he had taken a wrong way.

Now, I would like to help you, you know of course that 7 men of the 4 Battle of 142 Sqn. shot on this day of 14th may came back among them heavily wounded S/L Hobler. This is what he said…

“As we approached the target our section of two was attacked by five Me 109, coming along in line astern, to get some practice in on us. I had Sergeant Kitto as my observer and Corporal Barbrooke as gunner. We had worked out that we would use the upside-down VGO gun if possible, so Kitto got down on the floor, telling me where the enemies were coming from. I would have liked to have turned into them and used my front gun but these two VGO guns were very fast firing and we really thought we could do something with them.
As the 109s came in and attacked us, I was weaving away and could feel bullets striking our aircraft and felt glad that armour plate had been fitted to our positions, because this plate must have stopped a lot of projectiles from getting at us. It added to the weight of the Battle but we survived.
Kitto shouted that he'd got one of the b… Huns and I'm not sure we didn't damage another one. I'm sure we did and I know we got one. The 109s kept up their attack and shot us to pieces. I could feel the controls begin to go limp and all I could do was to try and hold the aircraft up, for we were so low there didn't seem much point in trying to get out by parachute at that stage.
Down below us were the German infantry advancing in personnel carriers, and as we got nearer to the ground, we could feel ground fire attacking us. Our glycol tank was blowing hot glycol all over me and I couldn't see a hell of a lot but I could see what I wanted to do. I was hoping to guide the aircraft between a couple of trees, so that we would more or less land evenly. But while doing this, I was aware that fire from the ground, very quick firing guns, were slowly cutting my instrument panel away before my very eyes. In other words, they were keeping pace with the aircraft as we glided down out of control and just cutting away the entire instrument panel. It was a most weird feeling, extraordinary experience. A couple of inches back and they would have been into me, but they were just cutting away at the panel. Really quite remarkable.
This went on as we came down towards the two trees and I managed somehow to put the nose of the aircraft somewhere in the middle of them. As we hit, the trees folded the wings back, stopping our descent and averting what would have been a bald, Flat-out crash. So we slithered onto the ground in that manner, very undignified, with the Germans not very far away and heading towards us like mad…”
He said 109 no 406

I have another story of a pilot of 142 Sqn who came back from this mission, Sergeant Arthur “dagger” Spear, he was almost able to come back with his “kite” but he can’t with the battle so damaged, he got the DFM. This is the citation :“In May, 1940 this airman was engaged in bombing operations against enemy and after successfully dropping his bombs, he was attacked by a number of Messerschmitt, the tail of his aircraft being shot away. He ordered his crew to abandon the aircraft and was thrown out whilst preparing to jump, but he landed by parachute in enemy territory. He was repeatedly under enemy fire but, securing a horse, he succeeded by sheer determination in overcoming many difficulties, including the swimming of a canal, and later returned safely to his unit”
It is written Messerschmitt not Morane.

Thank you.