John Ackland Wall
Royal Air Force 32 Squadron
John Wall is a good friend of mine here in Hamilton NZ, he's told me that he watched with awe the Spitfires in the Battle of Britain and as soon as he was old enough caught a train to London and signed up! Then it was off to Texas and training on Boeing Stearman and North American Harvards before coming back to the UK and joining 32 Sqn. He finally got his Spitfire Mkix GZ-M JF404 and we recently found it on the net, photographed just as he said at Foggia in Italy.
From there he went to Greece, landing hot on the heels of Jerry at Araxos where the Germans had blown a few holes in the strip which he said made for a tricky landing. Local peasant women filled the holes in for them! Flying photo recon flights over the Adriatic coast then conducting sweeps over the Balkans later in the war John came down and had to destroy the aircraft only to hear his fellow Spits coming back round to strafe the wreck, he hid and hoped for the rescue by partisans. Fortunately it was the ally friendly side and they secreted him around until a rescue flight on a Dak a few weeks later took him out. It had been hard and John says the only English they had was the leader knew the words to 'A long way to Tipperary' which kept his spirits up!
After the war he flew Spits in the Palestine theatre operation before joining civvy street and marrying Elma who he'd met in the service. We recently went for a flight in a Tiger Moth and John in his 90s still had 'it' as the pilot said when giving John the stick for a bit, its a pleasure knowing John, he's too humble to post his own memoirs, I hope I've done him justice.
He recently gave an interview to a a local aviation website. Click here to listen.
