28 February 2006
The family of Second World War hero, Sergeant James Ward will be presented with his Victoria Cross at a ceremony at RNZAF Base Ohakea on Friday 3 March.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force pilot, SGT Ward was one of only three New Zealand airmen to be awarded the Victoria Cross, for outstanding valour, during WWII.
SGT Ward won the Victoria Cross in 1941 after he climbed out on to the wing of his Wellington Bomber while in mid-air, to extinguish an engine fire.
He was killed in action ten weeks later.
The Victoria Cross has been in the care of the RNZAF since 1988 and will be returned to his family by the Chief of Air Force, Air Vice Marshal John Hamilton.
ENDS
The ceremony will begin at 2pm at RNZAF Base Ohakea. Media wishing to attend should contact Danielle Coe, Defence Public Relations 021 676 338
BACKGROUND
James Edward Allen Ward was born in Wanganui on 14 June 1919 and enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air Force on 2 July 1940. He left for the United Kingdom in January 1941 and was posted to active service with 75 NZ Squadron, RAF.
He was killed in air operations over Germany on 15 September 1941 and is buried in Hamburg, Germany.
Victoria Cross
"On 7/8 July 1941, while returning from one of the attack's on Münster, Sergeant James Ward of No 75 (NZ) Squadron was a second pilot in a Wellington attacked by an Me 110 over the Zuider Zee. The rear-gunner was wounded, much damage done, the starboard wing set ablaze. The crew were preparing to abandon the aircraft when Ward volunteered to go out on the wing and try to smother the flames with a cockpit cover which had served in the plane as a cushion. Attached to a rope and with the help of the navigator, he climbed through the narrow astro-hatch - far from easy in flying gear, even on the ground - put on his parachute, kicked holes in the Wellington's covering fabric to get foot and hand-holds on the geodetic lattices, and descended three foot to the wing. He then worked his way along to behind the engine, and, despite the fierce slipstream from the propeller, managed while lying down to smother the fire. Isolated from the leaking petrol pipe, this later burnt itself out. Ward, exhausted, regained the astro-hatch with great difficulty: "the hardest of the lot," he wrote, "was getting my right leg in. In the end the navigator reached out and pulled it in." Despite all the damage, the crew got home to a safe landing - perhaps the most remarkable thing, apart from Ward's exploit, being the fact that the pilot had no idea at the time what Ward was doing.
This deed performed by Ward, a young schoolmaster before the war, earned him the Victoria Cross, and which must surely be unsurpassed for calculated bravery. Sadly, Sergeant Ward was killed on a Hamburg raid only ten weeks later - before he received his Victoria Cross."