Warbird Information Exchange

RAAF pilot Flight Sergent Ken Wright should have been promoted to Flight Lieutenant.

But for various bureaucratic reasons and because he was shot down over Germany and spent the last three years of the war in a prison camp, that never happened.

After the war, he didn't care that much, returned to Australia and resumed his job with the Bank of NSW, now Westpac, married Lola, brought up his family and now lives retired at Avalon Beach, Sydney.Sixty-eight years after the end of the war, RAAF chief Air Marshal Geoff Brown, corrected that bureaucratic oversight in a moving ceremony at RAAF headquarters in Canberra.To his complete surprise and immense delight, Mr Wright, 93, was given an honorary promotion to the rank of flight lieutenant.Family members colluded in organising his trip to Canberra."I thought I was going to be given membership of the air force association," he said.

Mr Wright joined the RAAF in 1940, undertook basic training at Tamworth and through various postings ended up with the RAF Photographic Reconnaissance unit, flying an unarmed Spitfire in missions over Europe.

In August 1942, he was interviewed for his promotion."I applied for a commission, I thought I had applied for a commission. Meanwhile I got shot down and the squadron commander apparently threw the papers away," he said."When I came back from the POW camp, after being locked up for three years, I inquired about this and they said 'forget it' and so I did. It was the end of the war and nobody cared and I didn't care either."

Mr Wright was shot down on his 20th mission on August 17, 1942 as he flew over the Bremen Canal in Germany.A German Messerschmitt 109 fighter riddled his aircraft and he bailed out, nervously floating to the ground as the enemy aircraft circled.

Captured by German soldiers, he was taken the next day to an aerodrome and introduced to the pilot who shot him down, Lieutenant Dieter Gerhardt."We had a chat and he said one day we will be friends," he said.Gerhardt was shot down and killed six months later.Mr Wright never flew an aircraft again after the war but described flying a Spitfire for the first time as the greatest thrill of his life.

"It certainly was after flying an Avro Anson which took its time to stagger off the ground," he said.