Beaufighter Strike: The Untold Story of a Pilot’s Survival and LRDG Rescue

It was many years after the end of the Second World War that Bill Hayter’s children stumbled across his long-forgotten journal.Within its pages, they uncovered an extraordinary tale, one that had remained hidden for decades. When war broke out in 1939, Hayter fled France for Britain, determined to contribute to the fight against the Axis powers.Undeterred by his youth and imperfect eyesight, he falsified his personal details to join the Royal Air Force.After successfully earning his pilot’s wings, Bill was posted to 114 Squadron, then operating in North Africa, before being transferred to 47 Squadron.Flying the formidable Beaufighter, he soon found himself embroiled in the disastrous Dodecanese Campaign, a campaign fraught with danger and uncertainty. On 30 October 1943, during an attack on Axis shipping near the Nazi-occupied island of Naxos, Hayter’s Beaufighter was struck, forcing him to ditch into the sea.The impact was brutal: his head collided with the instrument panel, shatterin