Spitfire

He was born into a warring generation, and at 21 he sat in the cockpit of a fighter over the coast of France. Behind his Spitfire, with the green shamrock on its side, thundered the other ships in the command of the R.A.F.'s youngest Wing Commander (lieutenant colonel), the R.A.F.'s leading ace (32 planes): Brendan Finucane.

Paddy Finucane was on his last sweep. As he led his wing low over German installations on the French beach, his second-in-command saw something Paddy Finucane did not see: a small machine-gun post perched about 20 feet above the beach on a ridge of sand. It was not a regular gun post, with an emplacement and protecting sandbags, but just one machine gun on a tripod with two young men in German uniforms behind it. Finucane's second-in-command, whose name was Aikman, saw a burst from the machine gun go through Paddy's starboard wing and radiator. A split-second later Pilot Officer Aikman blew the gun post to blazes. But it was a split-second too late for Paddy Finucane.

Aikman called on his radio: "You've had it, sir--in your radiator."

Finucane replied: "I shall have to get out of this." Then, to his wing: "Hallo, wing commander calling. I've had it. Am turning out."

Aikman followed him as he turned out over the sea', trying to get as near England as possible with his failing engine. Aikman could see him quite clearly in the cockpit. He opened his sliding hood and took off his helmet. It appeared to Aikman that he was also releasing his parachute harness. Aikman called through his radio that he was going to climb so that he would be able to fix Finucane's position when he crashed. Paddy replied: "Get as high as possible."

Ten miles from the French coast Aikman saw the Spitfire with the green shamrock level off, drop its tail, hit the sea. Just before it crashed he heard Paddy's voice on the radio: "This is it, chaps." The ship sank like a stone. At 5,000 feet Aikman circled, watching the spot where it had sunk. All he saw was a streak of oil floating on the water's top.

Paddy Finucane was the first of World War II's flying heroes to live long enough to become a legend. But Brendan Finucane was no swashbuckling hero; he was a family man.

He had had a strict Catholic upbringing in Dublin and London before he joined the R.A.F. at 17. There was nothing spectacular about him except his flying, and he wanted very little except to be fit and right for that. When he got leave he would got to London and his mother would ask Paddy's girl over from next-door-but-one, and if his kid brother got leave from the Bomber Command at the same time they would have a real party. He scarcely ever took a drink and did not smoke much.

Before the dispersal hut where his plane stood he had a patchy little grass plot with a sign on it: "Keep Off the Grass." He used to yell at anybody who stepped on his grass. When he took off he walked across a narrow path to his plane, but when he came back from a Big Do he was too excited to remember and his boys would trample all over the grass getting to his ship to talk about the flight. If Paddy had shot down a plane he would talk last, his brogue broadening with excitement and his fingers curved back toward his arm making plane motions to illustrate the fight and a vein under his temple beating as if it had a separate heart. He was not very clear about what he was fighting for, except that he loved life and the air and comradeship in danger. But if anybody could have told him truly that it was for a peace that would bring to other young men a life as exciting, as full, as employed as his, without death at 21, he would probably have been pleased to know it.

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