Flying ace’s triple gongs
QUESTION Was the Allied pilot who brought down 60 V1s decorated for bravery?
Squadron Leader Joseph Berry claimed 61 V1 flying bombs, or doodlebugs — more than twice the number of the next most successful pilot in the raF’s Fighter Interception unit.
Berry was one of only a few airmen awarded the distinguished Flying Cross (dFC) three times during World War II.
He was born in quarrington, Co. durham in 1920 and worked for the Inland revenue in nottingham before the war.
He joined the raF in 1940 and flew Bristol Beaufighters in north africa with 153 Squadron, carrying out convoy and night patrols.
In 1943, he was posted to help defend the algiers and Bone areas of algeria. during the allied invasion of Italy at Salerno, he shot down three enemy aircraft, including two Messerschmitt Me210s and a Junkers Ju 88, after which he had to bail out of his aircraft.
It was for these actions that he received the dFC in March 1944.
In June 1944, promoted to Flight Lieutenant, he was posted to the Fighter Interception unit flying Hawker Tempests. over the next two months, he became the top scorer, shooting down 52 V1s, plus one shared.
In august 1944, the Tempest flight moved to Manston, Kent, to reform 501 Squadron, of which Berry became commanding officer. While based there he shot down seven V1s with another shared. For his extraordinary ability, he was awarded the first bar to his dFC.
In a BBC radio broadcast on September 9, 1944, Berry gave this insight into his work: ‘We patrol at between 5,000 ft and 6,000 ft, that’s about 3,000 ft higher than the path of the average flying bomb.
‘The first thing we see is a small light rather hard to distinguish from a star coming in from the sea, then the search lights point out the direction from which the bomb is coming.
‘The guns go into action and we wait for the bombs that get through the gun belt. as soon as we spot a bomb that’s run the gauntlet successfully, we make a diving turn and go down after it, finishing our dive just behind the bomb and opening fire at a range of about 250 yards.
‘But don’t get the wrong idea: the doodlebug doesn’t go down easily. It will take a lot of punishment and you have to aim at the propulsion unit — that’s the long stove pipe, as we call it, on the tail.
‘If your range and aim are dead on, you can see pieces flying off the stove pipe. The big white flame at the end goes out and down goes the bomb.
‘Sometimes it dives straight to Earth, but other times it goes crazy and gives a wizard display of aerobatics before finally crashing.
‘Sometimes the bomb explodes in midair and the flash is so blinding that you can’t see a thing for about ten seconds. You hope to be the right way up when you are able to see again because the explosion often throws the fighter about and sometimes turns it upside down.’
on october 2, 1944, Sqn Ldr Berry was flying over Holland on a raid to destroy a railway yard in northern Germany from where V1s were being transported.
He was shot down and killed, aged 24. His last words over the radio were: ‘I’ve had it chaps, you go on.’
He was awarded a second bar to his dfc posthumously on January 20, 1946.
Ken Rolley, Durham.
QUESTION Which animal has the most bones, and which has the fewest?
Only vertebrates have bones. More than 95 per cent of animals have no bones at all.
The longest pythons in the world have the most bones. They have 600 vertebrae, which equates to 1,800 bones. Most humans have just 206, though some are born with extra ribs or digits.
The vertebrates with the fewest bones are Chondrichthyes, sharks, rays, skates and sawfish, which have skeletons made of cartilage.
K. A. Anderson, Bangor.
QUESTION A Meccano magazine, dated March 1939, described hollow cones that were widely used to deter rats from running up a rope and on to a ship. Are they still in use?
Rat guards, as they are known, are still in use, though they tend to be flat discs rather than cones. on a cruise last year, I saw them used at all our ports of call.
Since the earliest days of navigation, sailors have fought a battle against rats, which get into the holds of ships and attack food stocks. They are the reason that ships often carried a cat.
until recent times, it was believed the Black death arrived in Europe and was spread by the fleas living on rats carried on board ships. However, it’s more likely to have been fleas living on humans.
The typical way for rats to get on board is to clamber along mooring ropes, or hawsers, securing the ship to the dock.
a rat can get into a hollow cone, but isn’t able to climb around the exterior. The modern flat disc has a radius wider than that which the rat can reach to grip the top edge, typically 18 in to 20 in, so it can’t clamber over.
The disc can be put in place after the ship has been tied up, while a cone has to be fed onto the end of the rope before being secured to a mooring bollard.
rat guards are a health precaution, preventing the spread of diseases. Some ports require their use to stop rats leaving ships and taking diseases ashore.
Farmers have also long fought to keep rats out of their granaries and food stores. The stone mushrooms outside old farm buildings, now seen as decorative, were once used to raise buildings above ground level.
The rats were unable to clamber around the mushrooms’ flat heads to get into the buildings and, as they were made of stone, couldn’t gnaw through them.
Bob Woodford, Northampton.
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