Pages tagged with: raf

New Zealand spitfire pilot, Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston, RAF, second from right, back from a fighter sweep over France in the days before D-Day

Massive supporting actions, including a complex plan designed to fool the Germans, assisted the landings at Normandy.

By 1944 more than 6000 New Zealanders were based in the United Kingdom, serving in the RAF.

The landings on 6 June 1944 were just the first part in a sustained campaign to break the war in Europe. For months after D-Day, planes flew over European cities, and the Allied troops pushed further inland. 

New Zealand Special Air Service troops with a Bristol Sycamore helicopter of the Royal Air Force

Maurice Mayston was a fighter pilot with 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron. On D-Day his squadron shot down the first German bomber over the Normandy battlefield, and quickly followed it with a second.

Royal Air Force Spitfire pilot, Philip Stewart, from Wanganui, describes how he went about destroying enemy trains and other vehicles.

Royal Air Force bomber pilot, John Morris describes Lucienne Vouzelaud, one of the French Resistance workers who helped him to safety after his plane was shot down in France.