[Laurent Rizzotti]

Thanks Leendert,

This story is placing the landing place near Tebessa, but it seems to me to be at least in part fiction, at least the 5 December 1942 part where Eliot survives while in fact he just disappeared, never to be seen again.

I have searched the names of the two Associated Press men given in the text, but found nothing. I used Google and a newspapers archive website, and found nothing about an Associated Press correspondent called Henry, Albert, Fry or Punter (or Hunter) about Tunisia in 1942-1943.

Still, if the location in the story is true, both pilots landed about ten miles from their airfield, so were back to it on the day after their evening forced landing, and so the event could take place on the evening of the 27th and Cole fly again on the 30th.