He was a bold fellow

First World War Audio Archive

He was a bold fellow

Transcript

I had a Vickers machine gun on the front and I had an observer

Pilot wearing heavy fur mitts.

with a Lewis gun in the back and that was pretty good. We flew a pretty, for those days, we flew pretty tight formations. Tight, meaning that we still had room to manoeuver a bit, but if my observer saw a German on the tail of the fellow who was flying opposite me, say, he would shoot at him, you see, and vice versa. He couldn’t shoot down if the fellow was right underneath us, but the fellows on either side were supposed to concentrate the fire. That was our, sort of, strategic plan, to keep formation no matter what and remember, look at the other guy. Don’t just look at yourself and anybody that came straight at you, of course which I had two examples. And fortunately, I guess I hit him

Photograph of pilot wearing fur coat.

before he hit me, because that last one I flew right through bits and pieces of his airplane before I got out, couldn’t even get out of the way of it, but I blew him up somehow. The main thing was I squeezed the trigger and I fired all my ammunition in one burst. We only had about 125 rounds, I think and it went pretty fast. But that German was a bold fellow. He came out of a formation, they were all circling around us and everything, and he came around and he came right straight down on our level. I thought he was going to go down and under but he didn’t. He flattened out and he came right straight at me. A Fokker D-7, not the tri-plane, the bi-plane at that time. And when I saw him flatten out and coming, I let go and that’s why I just squeezed that thing and kept going. Then I pulled up, all of a sudden, to get out of the way. As I say, I had some bullet holes about a

Pilot getting his commission by his plane.

foot out on the wing there right straight. He’d gone through both wings as a matter of fact, but it didn’t do either my observer or myself any harm and it didn’t put my engine out of commission. I put his engine out, I’m sure I did, because I could see bits and pieces of metal flying all over and had been in a big column of black smoke as he disappeared.

Description

Mr. Dickins describes the DH-9's weapons, flying in formation and protecting other aircraft in a flight. Included is his description of shooting down a German Fokker D-7 fighter in a head-on confrontation.

Clennell Haggerston ‘Punch’ Dickins

Clennell Haggerston ‘Punch’ Dickins was born in Portage la Prairie on January 12, 1899. He interrupted his education at the University of Alberta in 1917 by enlisting in the 196th Battalion, having already completed an officer training course. After being sent to England, he joined the 21st Reserve Battalion. His brother, an observer with the Flying Corps, convinced him to join the Air Force. Mr. Dickins jumped from the Canadian to the British Army in order to facilitate a transfer to the Air Force. Once there, he trained at Tetford in a Morris Marmon Shorthorn. His active duty was with 211 Squadron at Dunkirk. Mr. Dickins and his gunner are credited with 7 enemy aircraft destroyed, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, he spent time in the RCAF, with whom he did aerial photo-survey work. However, most of his civilian career was spent flying in Canada’s North, adapting aircraft for Arctic flight. He became one of Canada’s most famous bush pilots and a pioneer in aviation. Mr. Dickins and his wife Connie (nee Gerrie) lived in Gold Pines, Ontario. Mr. Dickins died on August 2, 1995.

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