David Ince was one of the most outstanding of the pilots who, flying the ground-attack Hawker Typhoon, bombed, rocketed and cannoned Nazi Germany’s military transport to a standstill across northwest Europe after D-Day — June 6, 1944 — when the Allies landed in northern France.
The Typhoon squadrons lost one in three of their 450 pilots, but Ince flew nearly 150 sorties and won a Distinguished Flying Cross for exploits that included the only raid in Europe to use napalm. It was dropped on April 12, 1945 over a German strongpoint near Arnhem, which Allied troops captured.
The napalm was put in 180-gallon containers, which were 8ft long, shaped like beer barrels, and painted red, with phosphorus igniter pistols on the outside. The barrels tumbled