The first time he had been shot down, he had been lucky.
He had just shot down a Dornier Do17 ‘Flying Pencil’ bomber (so called because of its long sleek and narrow airframe) when the Me 109 came out of the sun and shot away large pieces of his tail plane. ‘Green 2 baling out!’ he called through the RT, then undid his harness and disconnected the RT and his oxygen mask.
The canopy slid back easily and flipping the Hurricane onto its back, he fell out of the cockpit without difficulty, his parachute opening in a bloom of white silk above him. The Me 109 came round again and Yarrow thought the German was going to machine gun him as he swung helplessly in his parachute, it was not unknown for pilots to be shot in that way. Alan Bird had died like this and Polish pilots in the RAF routinel
