Our first big battle you might say was at Dieppe.
It was an absolute madhouse because if
you could imagine, the British launched about
three thousand sorties.
The Germans launched almost a thousand.
So you had four thousand
sorties of aircraft all churning around above a
little area, just about the size we'll say of
Nanaimo and its harbor.
Without the air force contribution that day
we would have lost everyone killed,
because the Germans could have just come in and
strafed back and forth and bombed back and
forth to their hearts content.
We thought we had shot down.
shot down, we in the sense of the Allies, thought
we had shot down about a hundred Germans and
they shot down 106 of ours, we knew that.
But in actual fact we only shot down 58 or something.
You'll shoot at one aircraft and you think you hit
it and he's going to crash. And as he goes down,
you really shouldn't follow him down,
you're busy doing something else.
Somebody else sees him and
he shoots at him and sees him
gonna crash and you know and he claims,
"I shot down an airplane," and you claim,
"I shot down an airplane."
And in all honesty
you both will say theoretically
shot down the same airplane.