Canberra has lost one of ''The Few''.
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Air Commodore James Baird Coward, who was shot down on August 31, 1940, while flying a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, died at Linton House at Yass on Wednesday.
A Royal Air Force flight lieutenant at the time of the dramatic events over southern England in the summer of 1940, he lost a foot when attacking a group of Dornier 215s head on in his Mk 1 Spitfire.
''My foot was shot off when closing, causing no pain but just a dull thud,'' he later recalled. I saw my bare foot on the floor of the cockpit, almost severed.''
The day went from bad to worse. ''My parachute got caught and I was forced back along the fuselage, my gloves being blown off. I tried to do a delayed drop from about 20,000 feet (6153 metres) because I was losing blood very quickly but was unable to stand the pain of the foot twisting in the slipstream, so I pulled the ripcord and put on a tourniquet (while descending) using my helmet wireless lead.''
On landing he was confronted by a 15-year-old youth armed with a pitchfork who thought he was a German.
Coward, who was born in Middlesex, England, in 1915, had joined the RAF in September 1936. His unit, Number 19 Squadron, was the first to fly the legendary Spitfire.
After being shot down he spent 19 months on Winston Churchill's personal staff before returning to flying duties. He stayed on in the RAF after the war and served with the British liaison staff in Canberra from 1960 to 1962.
On retiring as Britain's defence attaché to South Africa, a post he held from 1966 to 1969, Coward and his wife Cynthia migrated to Australia, where they built one of the first passively heated houses in the ACT.
They lived there until earlier this year. David Ellery