Above and beyond: Jimmy Ward VC

On the night of 7/8 July 1941, Vickers Wellington L7818, AA-R of No 75 (New Zealand) Squadron RAF, was returning to base at Feltwell in Norfolk after an attack on Munster in Germany when it was hit by cannon shells from a Luftwaffe Me 110 night fighter.

These ruptured various systems - the bomb bay doors fell open and the undercarriage partially lowered - while a fire began in a fuel line which threatened to spread across the fabric-covered wing. The second pilot, Sergeant James Ward, volunteered to try to douse the flames with a cockpit cover. With just a dinghy rope around his waist, he clambered out of the astrodome, bashing hand and foot-holds in the fuselage and wing to gain some grip. By his own account he probably had little real effect on the flames, which were going past his shoulder "like a blow torch", while the tremendous slipstream wrenched the cover from his grasp. Nevertheless they made it back to England and his extraordinarily courageous effort to save his crewmates earned him the Victoria Cross - albeit with some debate among the powers that be as to whether he deserved it, given the "element of self-preservation" in what he had done.

Ward was shot down and killed while bombing Hamburg some nine weeks later. He was 22.