Blown out of the sky then 4 days adrift on high seas

JOHN ‘Jerry’ DawsON, of Dumfries, survived in a dinghy in the atlantic after his aircraft was shot down.

Mr Dawson was a wireless operator on an raF flying boat when it was hit by a German submarine it was sent to destroy in July 1943.

Mr Dawson, who had been manning a .50 calibre machine gun, writes in the archives: ‘There were a few dull thuds from up front, a strong smell of burning plastic and then the port engine was streaming black smoke and petrol.’

Meanwhile, the submarine’s captain had crash-dived his U-boat and did not witness the aircraft ditching.

The crew faced a slow death by starvation and thirst while their dinghy drifted for four days, but the men’s camaraderie kept up their spirits. Mr Dawson, above, recalls: ‘On July 11 we had eaten all the chocolate when rigger Paddy Doyle, asked, “what about the orange?” skipper Denis “Buck” ryan, from Co Tipperary, replied: “save it for tomorrow – it’s Orange Day.” That is why I always remember the 12th of July.’

On the fourth day, the drifting airmen were spotted and picked up by a royal Navy warship.

But it was promptly attacked by German aircraft and set on fire.

‘It was not a case of out of the frying pan into the fire but out of the sea into the frying pan’, Dawson wryly observed.

He and his comrades were later landed safely in Casablanca, Morocco.

Their heroic survival was hailed as an inspiration for other ditched aircrew.