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The other giant killers

In the excellent Giant Slayers feature, about the success of South African Air Force Kittyhawks against Axis transports over the Gulf of Tunis on April 22, 1943 (BAW, January 2022), you referred to the Spitfire escort provided by 1 Squadron.

As readers of the article will know, 1 Squadron’s day began with a mistake. At 7am on April 22, 1943, Major ‘Snowy’ Moodie led a dozen Spitfires to escort P-40s of the USAAF 79th Pursuit Group on its hunt, but the Spitfires picked up the wrong group of Kittyhawks. Unaware of this, Moodie’s aircraft weaved above the formation as it headed over the Gulf of Tunis. Flying off Cap Bon at 8.30am, at 11,000ft and ten miles off the coast (near the island of Zembra) in a slight mist and poor visibility, the transports and escorting Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Macchi C.202s were spotted.

Realising the Kittyhawks had not seen them, Moodie ordered his ‘Green’ and ‘Red’ sections to attack, leaving his own section and the Poles as top cover. One of his pilots wrote: “They were flying in a great vic of 15, with a smaller vic of 5 inside it. It is estimated that the transport aircraft had a scattered escort of about ten Bf 109s and MC.202s. A great slaughter now began.”

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