Kain, Edgar James “Cobber”.

Kain, Edgar James “Cobber”, born in Hastings, the third of four children of George Kain, a warehouseman, and his wife Nellie born Keen. His family moved to Wellington, where his father set up a warehousing business. On 27-06-1918, was educated at Christ’s College, Christchurch and studied mathematics at the University Tutorial School, Wellington, under Professor Georg von Zedlitz . Zedlitz died age 78. While at school he played rugby, cricket, and excelled at athletics. He took up flying early in life and secured his “A” pilot’s licence at Wigram in 1936. At that time he was a clerk in his father’s commercial business, but he already had his eye on the Air Force and after obtaining his licence, he applied for a short-term commission in the Royal Air Force . He arrived in the United Kingdom in November of that year and, receiving his short-term commission in December, was enrolled as a pupil pilot at Blackburn, Lincolnshire. After further training at Sealand and Tern Hill, he was posted in November 1937 to No. 73 Fighter Squadron . He was made flying officer in 1939, and at the outbreak of the Second World War was appointed a section commander of No. 73 Hawker Hurricane Squadron.  He  flew on 80 fighter and escort operations over Le Havre, Louvres, Rheims, Verdun, and other parts of enemy-occupied territory, and was officially credited with the destruction of 12 enemy aircraft in fighter engagements. He was mentioned in dispatches in February 1940, and in March of the same year was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross  for a particularly daring exploit. He was flying on operations when he sighted seven enemy machines above him at 5.000 ft. He immediately gave chase and while pursuing them back towards the German lines he found another enemy fighter on his tail. Attacked from behind, and with his own craft considerably damaged, he engaged the enemy plane and shot it down.   With his cockpit full of smoke and oil, he contrived by the greatest skill to get his machine down behind the Allied lines. The citation for the award referred to the magnificent fighting spirit Kain displayed in outmaneuvering his enemy and destroying him. The pity of it was that such a superb officer, with so splendid a record, should have been killed in an aircraft accident, quite unnecessarily, three weeks before his twenty-second birthday.

  On 07-06-1940, suffering nervous exhaustion and fatigue, Kain and another long-serving pilot of No. 73 Squadron received orders to return to England as soon as replacement flying personnel had arrived. A group of pilots arrived the next day for allocation to the various squadrons of the AASF; four were assigned to Kain’s squadron, thus freeing him to return to England. In front of a group of his squadron mates who gathered at the airfield at Échemines to bid him farewell, he took off in his Hurricane to fly to Le Mans to collect his kit. He then began to perform some low level aerobatics. On the third of a series of “flick” rolls, he misjudged his altitude and hit the ground heavily. He was pitched out of the Hurricane’s cockpit and killed when he struck the ground some distance away from his crashed aircraft. he was killed, age 21. Flying Officer Kain became almost a legend during his brief but glorious career as “one of the few”. To his skill and daring he added an ebullience of temperament which made him a vivid and memorable personality wherever he was stationed. His friendly disposition and general light heartedness earned him the sobriquet “Cobber”, and as Cobber Kain he is better known to the wartime generation of servicemen and civilians alike than as Flying Officer Edgar Kain.  Kain here with Sgt Donald A Sewell  was buried in Troyes cemetery. After the war his remains were moved to the Allied section of the Choloy war cemetery Meurthe et Moselle, in France. Sergeant Sewell later made the transition to Bomber Command. He was killed on 19-03-1944, age 28, as a Squadron Leader with 166 Squadron, operating in Lancasters from Kirmington, Lincolnshire.