At the unit, the crew learned the life-saving skills of functioning as a team.<\/p>\n
The 75 Squadron with a Stirling bomber in 1943. Photo \/ Alexander Turnbull Library<\/p>\n
In June 1944, the crew was posted to RAF Mepal in Cambridgeshire, the base of the 75 (NZ) Squadron, a bomber squadron of the Royal Air Force manned mainly by New Zealanders flying Vickers Wellington bombers, Short Stirling bombers and Arvo Lancaster bombers.<\/p>\n
The crew flew its first war operation on June 14 \u2013 a little over a week after D-Day.<\/p>\n
At 103, Fox\u2019s memories from this time are understandably foggy, but his son Graeme describes his father\u2019s tour of 30 operations as \u201ccomparatively uneventful\u201d with one exception.<\/p>\n
On July 18, 1944, Fox was with Moriarty on the 11th operation of their tour, dropping bombs in a Lancaster on German positions near Caen during a daylight raid.<\/p>\n
The operation was in support of the Allies\u2019 attempted breakout from the Normandy beachhead.<\/p>\n
Their aircraft was at 7500 feet (2.3km up) when a German shell burst.<\/p>\n
In an interview before his death in 2010, Moriarty recalled closing the bomb doors when a \u201cbig puff of black smoke erupted in front of the cockpit\u201d and punched a hole \u201cabout the size of a cabbage in the Perspex cockpit hood\u201d.<\/p>\n
Shrapnel from the explosion drove through Moriarty\u2019s left eye and exited behind his left ear.<\/p>\n
His crew slapped a field dressing on the wound, but Moriarty refused morphine to keep his \u201cwits\u201d about him while he remained at the controls with one working eye.<\/p>\n
He called for a course back to Mepal rather than an emergency field, because he was more familiar with the airfield and others aboard couldn\u2019t fly the bomber.<\/p>\n
For the next 90 minutes, the bomb aimer called off instrument readers while the flight engineer worked the flaps.<\/p>\n
Moriarty and his crew landed safely and eased to a halt as medics clambered aboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a great landing,\u201d Moriarty remembered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t smoke, but I asked for a cigarette. I must have seen too many westerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moriarty was awarded the rare Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for his act of bravery that day, which saved his crew.<\/p>\n
But because of his injuries, the war was over for Moriarty.<\/p>\n
Fox and the crew had to wait for a new pilot and by mid-October 1944 had completed their allocated 30 operations, achieving tour-expired status.<\/p>\n
The crew was disbanded and Fox was sent to the air gunnery school at RAF Castle Kennedy in Scotland.<\/p>\n
In 1945, Fox was recalled to the 75 (NZ) Squadron to join Tiger Force, the bomber command set to undertake strategic bombing against the Japanese.<\/p>\n
But before it was deployed, atomic bombs were dropped over Japan, and the war was over.<\/p>\n
Fox returned to his relieved parents in Oamaru around Christmas 1945.<\/p>\n
Some years later, Fox went to see the crew\u2019s bomb aimer Ian Ward, where he met Iris Ward, Ian\u2019s younger sister and Fox\u2019s future wife.<\/p>\n
The two raised a family in Frimley, where they lived happily for decades.<\/p>\n
Iris died in 2016, but the fiercely independent Fox lived by himself into his 100th year until Cyclone Gabrielle moved him in with his daughter Robyn in Havelock North.<\/p>\n
When asked how to last well into triple figures, Fox had a simple reply.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re either built that way, or you\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Britain, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When New Zealand entered World War II in September 1939, Fox wanted to volunteer for the Air Force.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[127416,6030,68,95,17515,205256,47034,293,5962,4188,17768,130,3025,13631,111,139,529,69,1118,205257,8601,213,427,6639,131,223,6035,1533,41297,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-397193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-103yearold","9":"tag-again","10":"tag-air","11":"tag-and","12":"tag-experience","13":"tag-gunner","14":"tag-havelock","15":"tag-his","16":"tag-humans","17":"tag-living","18":"tag-means","19":"tag-more","20":"tag-most","21":"tag-never","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-north","25":"tag-nz","26":"tag-of","27":"tag-oneeyed","28":"tag-seeing","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-story","31":"tag-survival","32":"tag-than","33":"tag-the","34":"tag-things","35":"tag-will","36":"tag-wwii","37":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}