*This was originally published in March 2000. http://www.thisisbrightonandhove.co.uk/brighton__hove/archive/2000/03/06/news5VQ.html
Former fighters find friendship
The North Sea was lit by a near full moon as pilot Peter McMillan tailed the German bomber.
The young flight lieutenant had already downed one of the Fuhrer's Dorniers and was now lining up the second in the gun sights of his Beaufighter.
He squeezed the trigger and saw the bullets hit the Luftwaffe aircraft 500ft away. Smoke erupted from its belly and the last the 26-year-old pilot saw of the plane was it diving towards the waves.
He thought the crew had died, but last October he learned the pilot, Willi Schludecker, was alive. And the former adversaries will meet again on Thursday - almost 58 years after their dogfight.
The meeting, at Shoreham Airport, was arranged by war historian Bill Norman, of Cleveland, who tracked down grandfather-of-five Mr McMillan, of Woodruff Avenue, Hove, through RAF records.
Mr McMillan, who has lived in Sussex since 1942, said: "It's going to be very interesting, considering we were shooting at each other all those years ago. I expect we will talk about airplanes, but I'll just take things as they come.
"Bill said they won't bring any bombs and I said I would leave my cannon at home. I don't remember much of the night, as it was so long ago. I stalked the first one and then I went after Willi. There was a short exchange of machine gun fire."
Commercial pilot Richard Flohr-Swan, who lives in Germany and was taught to fly in 1972 by Herr Schludecker, will act as an interpreter as neither man speaks the other's language.
Mr McMillan, 84, learned that after their encounter on July 23, 1942, Herr Schludecker crash-landed at Gilze-Rijen in the Netherlands and spent six months in hospital recovering from his injuries.
Herr Schludecker, 79, began flying in the spring of 1941, when he was 21. He made 120 flights over Russia, England and the Balkans and nine of his aircraft were written-off in crash-landings. He was awarded the Iron Cross twice.
He has been to England several times since the war and last year visited York, which he bombed in 1942. Mr McMillan was serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force when he shot down Herr Schludecker's plane and was with the RAF when he was promoted to Group Captain.
He left the airforce in 1966 and worked for the Department of Health until his retirement in 1976. He was a magistrate in Brighton from 1969 to 1976 and a county councillor from 1979 to 1987.
Gp/Capt McMillan's daughter told me that by shooting him down her father had probably saved Willi Schludecker's life. From the photos of the wreckage Herr Schludecker showed me he was lucky to get out of it alive.
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