I heard mention of this on another forum and was intending to follow it up. Thanks for that David. Was intrigued by the idra of Spit V Spit combat.
Quite disturbing really. Found this amusing in an otherwise sad state of affairs: The early morning raid caught the pilots of 208 Sqn recovering from the after-effects of an exuberant Dining-In Night, during which it had been decided to destroy the Officers' Mess to prevent it falling intact into the hands of the Israelis. I know very little about what's going on in that neck of the woods or, more correctly, how it all started but I can certainly understand the Palestinians anger at being partitioned.
I found two pics of McElroy examining damage to a propeller blade and rudder of a Spit purported to have been HIS after this action on another site, there is no mention of his a/c being hit on any of these write-ups ? I found the pics whilst trawling the net for battle-damage photos. BC
As a member of the RAF Historical Society, I checked it out and the author's name is Sqdn Ldr Bruce Williamson. The thing about the Spit V Spit thing, On the Israeli side, The Canadian had been on Malta during the siege and had won A DFC and Bar. The American had flown a tour n Spits with the RAF before transferring to the US Navy and finally as a trest pilot with Bell Aviation. So, they were more experienced flyers, while the pilots on the RAF side were realitive new comers.
During a further trawl of the net for battle-damage pictures, I found a couple of sample pages from a book titled The Spitfire Mk IX in IAF Service 1948-1956by Alex Yofe (White Crow publications, 2006). There appear to be several pictures of the shot-up IAF mentioned above. BC
It wasn't a real "vs.". It was basically miss-identification and mixed up in the chaos. The RAF wasn't really fighting against IAF. They were attacked and that was it. The end result would not be the same if it was a fair head on fighting instead of "I don't even know who attacked me and why I was attacked"...
