"Dr Arthur Page, who has died aged 100, was a wartime Fleet Air Arm pilot, one of the last to attack the Japanese mainland, and later a New Forest general practitioner. On July 16 1945 the carriers Victorious, Formidable and Indefatigable of the British Pacific Fleet joined the US 3rd Fleet in Task Force 38 for the “softening up” of the Japanese home islands. Aircraft from Victorious attacked Japanese shipping, transport and airbases on Honshu and around the Inland Sea. On July 28, Page was flying a Grumman Avenger of 849 Naval Air Squadron over Habu, south-west of Fukuyama, when his aircraft was hit and set on fire. Nursing the plane across the Inland Sea and over the surrounding hills towards the Pacific Ocean, Page reached the open sea to find mountainous waves. Judging it better to land crosswind and at high speed, to avoid crashing into the crests or being swamped in the troughs, he ran along the face of a wave. Page and his crew, consisting of a rear gunner and a Reuters reporter, survived the crash and climbed into a life-raft ready to take their chances. Fortunately, his crash-landing was spotted by one of his squadron, the fleet alerted as to his position, and within three hours both he, his gunner and his journalist passenger were rescued by a whaler from a British destroyer. Page was returned to Victorious later that day and within 36 hours flew another Avenger off the carrier’s deck to continue the attack. The elder of two sons of a Royal Navy chaplain, Arthur Reginald Webster Page was born on December 19 1923 at Deal in Kent. His mother’s family, the Brewers, included many doctors who had for 200 years benefited from a first-class medical education at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Young Page was educated at Haileybury and destined for Barts when war broke out. In the winter of 1942-43 he trained at Lee-on-Solent, the Wirral and at Crail, and completed advanced flying training in Kingston, Ontario, crossing the Atlantic in RMS Queen Mary. Page began his operational flying in the three-crew Fairey Barracuda, but by August 1944 he had qualified to fly the more powerful American-built Grumman Avenger torpedo-bomber and joined Victorious and 849 NAS in Ceylon." Dr Arthur Page, wartime naval pilot who survived landing in crashing Pacific seas – obituary (msn.com)
