First Enemy Contact and the Importance of Teamwork
Heroes Remember
First Enemy Contact and the Importance of Teamwork
Tell me, Mr. Sager, the first time that you came into contact
with enemy, enemy airplanes, do you remember your reaction?
Ah yes, I suppose I did. You know, Neil, the most nervous,
worrying time I wonder if you would understand this.
You would have a briefing about where you were going to go,
as a wing, for example, in your squadron, and the role you were
going to play and whether you were going to be escorting
bombers or what you were going to do. And then there was always
a period of a half an hour when you were waiting, you went to
your aircraft, you talked with your air, ground crew to see that
everything was in order. That waiting period was the time when,
was very tough on the nerves and you wanted to get off right
away but the, the longer you had to wait for deferred then, but
once you got into the air you were occupied all, of course, all
the time, that disappeared. My first encounter was, I was, I was
flying fairly close to the squadron leader and, who was it
at the time, and he turned and we were attacked from the rear and
he did a, he called a break and I was, with my number two,
turned into him, into, he did a complete circle or two and
straightened out and got the leader or the tailman of the
Germans, by the time we got close they had disappeared. So my
first encounter was completely unsuccessful.
Can I tell you a little something that I did learn? When you,
when the young people think about Spitfires and they think about
the aces and they think about what was the Canadian ace?
Buzz Beurling. Buzz Beurling, and others, and yet I came
to realize that while individual marksmen, this isn't a run to
belittle marksmen. While it was excellent to have good
shooters, good marksmen, the most important thing in a fighter
squadron was the sense of team work you could develop because
every single member of a flying unit had a role to play and
if he didn't it may be that he would know that he would never
probably get in, contact himself, never have a chance to shoot
his guns. But the number twos were protecting their leader, you
were all looking for the enemy, you all had to be able to
maintain your position whatever it was and you, so that the,
the role of every single pilot was most important. It's
unfortunate, in a way, that DFC's, Distinguished Flying
Crosses, were given to fighter pilots really on the basis of the
number of aircraft they shot down, the minimum would be three,
three or four. Whereas some of my, I became a flight commander
on, three times and so I came to appreciate the people, the
pilots who flew with me. Some of these other pilots who didn't
shoot down, and didn't get a DFC, they had, I always felt had as
much a, as much a, they should be, it should have been, we
should have found some way to reward them because they, they
had, some of them, knowing that they were good marksmen, they
had to perform the, knowing that their chances of being shot down
themselves were higher than the good marksmen, yet they
performed, they carried out their jobs supremely well. They were
the, I always felt, the most courageous of the lot. I had a
couple of, 2 or 3 chaps who, when I had my own squadron, who
were my flight commanders, and neither, none of those three,
four, got a DFC, but they were superb leaders, and they showed
tremendous courage even in the height of battle.
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