Originally Posted by The Few
"Of the 23 South Africans egaged in the Battle (of Britain), the Supreme analyst of tactics, the pastmaster of survival, was 30-year-old Flight Lieutenant Adolph Gysbert Malan, known inevitably, after service as a Third Officer with the Union Castle Steamship Line, as "Sailor".
" 'Sailor' was incomparably the greatest," Wing Co. Bouchier was to avow later, for few but 'Sailor' , commanding 74 Squadron at Hornchurch, would have taken the pains to compute that the Spitfire's four Browning machine guns, blasting 1,260 rounds a minute, possessed a fire-power equivalent to a five-ton truck hitting a brick wall at 60 miles an hour.
In that era, when slow-paced and poorly armed Blenheims fought a losing battle against the menace of the night bomber, it took 'Sailor' Malan, airborne on the night of June 18 during a raid on Southend, to single out two Heinkels trapped by searchlight beams and put paid to both in ten minutes flat"
