War hero dies at 88

World War 2 RNZAF pilot Dave Moriarty, awarded the rare Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (CGM) for an act of bravery over the Normandy battlefield in 1944, has died in Wanganui aged 88.

Moriarty was just one of four New Zealand aircrew, all in Bomber Command, who won the medal during the war, and the last survivor of the select group.

The others were Bruce Wallace, Invercargill (died 2001), Ted de Joux, Timaru (1983) and Bill White, Christchurch (1982).

The CGM, instituted in 1943 for airmen of non-commissioned rank for conspicuous gallantry in air operations against the enemy, was awarded to only 111 aircrew between then and the end of the war.

Moriarty, on the 11th operation of his tour, was the captain of a 75 (NZ) Squadron Lancaster dropping bombs on German positions near Caen, on July 18, 1944 during a daylight raid when he won the medal.

His aircraft was at 7500 feet when a German shell fired from the ground burst.

He recalled years later: "We'd just closed the bomb doors when a big puff of black smoke erupted in front of the cockpit, perhaps 100 yards away...it punched a hole about the size of a cabbage in the perspex cockpit hood."

Moriarty never knew what smashed into his face - a piece of perspex or a shell sliver.

Whatever it was it drove through his left eye and exited behind his left ear. Blood poured down his uniform and when he put his hand across his uninjured eye he couldn't see.

Fellow crew slapped on a field dressing but Moriarty wouldn't have morphine - "I wanted my wits about me."

Moriarty called for a course to his base rather than an emergency field because he was familiar with his own airfield and the others aboard couldn't fly the bomber.

The flight home was the worst 90 minutes of Moriarty's life because of pain from the wound, nausea and the stream of cold air screaming in from the shattered windscreen.

The bomb aimer called off key instrument readings and the flight engineer worked the flaps.

"It wasn't a great landing," Moriarty remembered.

But the big aircraft got down safely and as it eased to a halt medics clambered aboard.

"They climbed in over the spar and lifted me out. I didn't smoke but I asked for a cigarette. I must have seen too many westerns."

Moriarty was in hospital for three months as surgeons tried desperately and vainly to save his eye.

The New Zealander was commissioned after the raid and ended the war a Flying Officer.

Post-war Moriarty returned to the Wanganui company with which he worked before enlisting in February 1942, eventually becoming manager.

He worked until the early 1980s and for all those years suffered from his war wound - shocking headaches that laid him flat on his back.

His right eye gradually failed too and by 2000 he couldn't read a newspaper.

Moriarty, born in Wanganui on August 13 1921, died, fittingly, on Anzac Day.

He is survived by his wife Delia, to whom he was married for 60 years, and a son, Brian.

- NZPA