Answeing my own question but Google had quite a few entries about this and the following sums it up well :
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
LATELINE
Late night news & current affairs
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline
URL:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/hc14.htm
Published: 22/09/2003
The Day Goering Nearly Copped It
June the 8th, 1917, has been on my mind since I was a young lad. Could it have changed the world? I think so.
A young Australian soldier, Frank Dilloway Slee, had been fighting in the trenches of the Western Front for sic months, including the hell-hole of Pozieres in France. He volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps, was accepted, went to England, learnt to fly and was posted back to France, to No.1 Squadron at Baillieu. His pilots log book shows he had his first solo flight in an Avro on April 27, 1916, at Netheravon in Wiltshire. Kingsford Smith had his first on April 15 at the same airfield (see biography of Smith by Ian Mackersey.) Years later Slee would tell his children "I trained with Smithy" but not another word could you get out of him until he wrote his memoir not long before he died.
Forward to 1917. Slee's first operational flight was at dawn, June 8. He was instructed to take the rear position in a diamond formation of four Nieuport Scout fighter plants, a position know as arse-end Charlie.
"Don't join in any scraps this trip," said his flight commander. "Just pull out to the side and watch, then rejoin us."
Three times this happened, but on the fourth when he pulled out he saw a German plane with black crosses on it, 300ft below him, heading rapidly for home to the east. This was the ideal position to be in for a "kill". Slee tells what happened in his war memoir. He dived on the German, lin4ed up his aldis sight and gave him a long blast with his Lewis gun. "I will swear I hit his machine," Slee said. "I could see my tracer bullets." He chased the German, whose Albatross was faster than the Nieuport. Alas, in his excitement, Sell did not know he was hading east towards Germany. Two other German planes then joined in, and Slee realised he was in bad trouble as he tried to shoot his way out of it. Suddenly he lost his engine, and went into a steep dive to get the propeller started again. (No self starters, no parachutes then. "Jump or burn" was the saying.) He was still at 10,000ft, and decided to try a trick. Pull the joy stick back into your tummy, kick harder on left rudder and go into a spin. Gerry might think he's got you, and not follow you down, and you might gain some distance on him as you head home. He did this, but the Germans followed him down, still shooting, till he was at 1000ft. He pulled out of the spin and was heading for him when they hit something vital and his engine stopped again. This was it! Only 1000ft of height left, you could glide with no engine for only one mile per 1000ft, and he was still 10 miles behind the line.
Slee's memoir continues: "By the greatest of good luck there was flat cleared land right under me - pasture and some potatoes. I got down as quickly as possible and landed on a potato crop and then the shooting stopped. I tipped up on my propeller and then turned over on my back and hung by my belt. When this happened during training the etiquette was to stay there until they took your photo. And normally when this happens no petrol escapes, but now there was petrol everywhere."
Pilots were told they must set fire to their planes if they were forced down behind the lines. Slee stuck a match, but to his horror found one boot jammed under the rudder bar. Fortunately, thigh-length wool-lined flying boots, a full-length leather flying greatcoat, leather helmet and goggles gave him a few seconds protection from the flames while he pulled his foot out of the trapped boot and fell to the ground.
Surrounded by people now, including some German soldiers and an angry farmer with a pitch fork held to his stomach, the one-booted Slee could not run away.
They locked him up for the night in one of the few surviving houses in the nearby Belgian town of Moorslede and posted a guard on his door. Another horror - he had a postcard in his pocket he had bought to send to his mother back in Fremantle. It depicted half a dozen lunatics with a caricature of the Kaiser in the centre, bearing the caption "There are a lot of lunatics who think they are the Kaiser, but only one is right!" He asked t go to the lavatory, and while a guard stood at the lavatory door, he ripped the postcard up and flushed it away.
That afternoon, three German pilots visited him, and they had a broken conversation in schoolboy French. They all shook hands, and Slee spent the rest of the war in three prisoner of war camps, before escaping from Karlsruhe with some friends by bribing a guard with Red Cross chocolate, and making his escape across Europe to the English Channel.
Slee did not remember the names of the three pilots, but said they were the three of that morning's battle. In his memoir years later he said, "The boss one was a small fattish chap. From memory, he looked like Goering." But Goering remembered Slee, and in a biography of Goering by Willi Frischauer published in 1950 the only one of the 22 Goering air victories of WW1 mentioned was a one-page account of this battle. "I think he said his name was Slee" said Goering in the book. Frischauer obtained details of this from a speech made by Goering to the Pilots Club in Berlin in the 1930's. When his son John, working as a journalist in London in 1960, found a copy of this book in a WH Smith bookstore and excitedly sent it back to his father in Bunbury WA, his father replied "Oh yes, I had already read it."
Years later in 1971 four years after he died, the official history of No.1 Squadron confirmed that he had been shot down by Lieut Hermann Goering, who was the commander of Jasta 27, the squadron involved in the fight. Goering later took over from the Red Barron, Manfred von Richthofen.
Goering, as head of the Luftwaffe in WWII, had England on its knees in 1941. With clear air superiority he was bombing English airfields and things looked grim. Then he changed tactics and started bombing London. The Brits were able to regroup, they won the Battle of Britain and the rest is history.
But what if Goering had been shot down by Frank Slee?
- John Slee, Western Australia
Seems the medal was given to a bomber pilot as per the following post :
"As my safari in Australia draws to an end I had the great privelege and pleasure to meet-in Perth, Western Australia, ''Kim Roberts, nephew of Flight-Lieutenant Kimberley ''Kim Roberts,D.F.C. the Royal Australian Air force Lancaster Bomber pilot from Bunbury, West Australia, who was shot down and killed on June 6th 1944 while supporting the D-day landings by bombing a bridge near Carentan, Normandy, while also wearing Herman Goering's World War One Iron Cross.
Two crew members are still alive today,and survived thanks to 'Kim''Roberts gallantry in staying at the controls of his doomed Lancaster, shot up by a German fighter.
''Kim'' Roberts had been handed Herman Goering's Iron Cross in 1939 by Frank Slee, who, as a rookie Royal Air Force fighter pilot was shot down in June 1917 by Herman Goering, who was so impressed by Frank Slee's dogfight performance against him that he handed the then young Australian his Iron Cross-which , in 1939, Frank Slee presented to ''Kim'' Roberts in the hope that if he became a P.O.W. it might help him(the latter information was volunteered by Frank Slee's grandson, whom I was also priveleged to meet at 'Kim' Roberts home in Perth W.A. "
Interesting story.
Regards
Brett
