Australian WWII pilot to be finally buried at Normandy

[Feuer Frei!]

AN Australian World War II pilot whose Spitfire was discovered more than six decades after he was forced to ditch into a French river will at last be buried with full military honours. Flight Lieutenant Henry "Lacy" Smith, 27, from Sydney, was hit by enemy fire and crash-landed his plane in the River Orne on June 11, 1944, just five days after the D-Day landings.
The aircraft and Flt Lt Smith's remains were recovered in November last year by the operator of a French war museum.
The former loom tuner, who learnt to fly as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme in Australia and Canada, will be buried at the Ranville war graves cemetery in Normandy, northern France, tomorrow.
"According to the story given to us, his fuel tanks were holed by anti-aircraft fire," Mr Dostine told AAP.
"He wasn't on fire or anything. He was losing fuel madly. He was radioing, 'I've been hit, I'm going to put her down'. And he put her down on what we would say he assumed to be a big, green flat. It turned out to be swampy river bed and the aircraft slid along and into the Orne River.
"Two others (pilots) flying with him saw what happened. When he hit the ground and slid along into the river, they flew ... past and saw that the plane's nose had gone down and tipped over and was nose down in the river. There was very little likelihood of him having survived because the cockpit was underwater. And there he stayed for 60 years."


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RIP, SIR!