- A newly-discovered letter has finally provided the answer
to why one of the Luftwaffe's top fighter pilots never took up the challenge
to a mid-air duel with "Johnnie" Johnson, the Second World War
Spitfire ace. <LINK
HERE>
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- The RAF pilot, renowned for his courage and flying skill,
dared Walter Matoni, a German air force major who shot down 44 Allied planes,
to meet him in the skies above northern France in 1944 in one-to-one combat
to establish, for posterity, which of them was the greatest pilot of the
war.
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- Johnson's challenge was made over Service radio but the
duel never took place because Matoni was hospitalised before they could
meet. The truth about the proposed duel has emerged with the discovery
of a letter written by Matoni to Johnson while the German was a prisoner
of war in the Ruhr valley.
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- After being interrogated by British intelligence he asked
one of his captors, Jack Machin, a sergeant in the Welsh Regiment, to pass
on a note written on straw paper to the British ace to explain why he had
not appeared. Machin never delivered the letter and it was discovered by
his son Trevor among his father's belongings 56 years later.
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- Mr Machin, 58, from Norwich, said: "My father did
not feel this was suitable behaviour for a British officer to engage in
and felt it would be embarrassing to Johnson if it emerged after the war."
Mr Machin has made attempts to contact Matoni, who is understood to have
retired into civilian life after the war. He has, however, been unable
to discover his whereabouts, despite having approached services organisations
and the German embassy in London.
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- Johnson, whose real christian names were James Edgar
but was widely known as Johnnie, was Britain's most successful pilot in
the Second World War with 38 confirmed victories. He died from cancer on
Tuesday aged 85 at his home in Derbyshire. The ace tangled with Matoni
in the first aerial battle in France after D-Day as the Allied forces on
the ground pushed out from their Normandy beachhead during June 1944.
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- In the letter, Matoni writes: "Johnnie Johnson,
England's best and most famous fighter, sent to me a challenge for a singular
air combat in July 1944 via radio. I accepted the challenge in January
1945. I could not fly combat at that moment because I had been in an accident
that was grave enough to force me to rest in hospital until March 1945."
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- Mr Matoni writes: "At that time the German Supreme
Command refused to give me permission to give my answer to J. Johnson by
radio. Now, after the war, I wish to give my answer to the best British
fighter and to say [sic] him the circumstances why I couldn't follow his
challenge."
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- Mark Seaman, a historian at the Imperial War Museum,
said that it was the first challenge he had heard of being made in the
Second World War. _____
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