Lloyd Allan Trigg

Lloyd Allan Trigg was born on 5 May 1914 at Houhora, in the far north of New Zealand. He was educated at Whangarei Boys’ High School and Auckland University College, farmed in the Victoria Valley, and had served in a territorial infantry unit before joining the Royal New Zealand Air Force in June 1941. He won his pilot’s wings early in 1942, was commissioned, and late that year was posted to West Africa to fly long-range maritime patrols hunting U-boats in the Atlantic approaches.

By the summer of 1943 Trigg was a flying officer with No. 200 Squadron RAF, which had re-equipped with the Consolidated Liberator. On 11 August 1943, patrolling from Bathurst in West Africa, he sighted the surfaced German submarine U-468. The U-boat stayed up to fight it out and put many hits into the Liberator as Trigg ran in. With his aircraft already damaged and on fire he pressed the attack to the end, dropping his depth charges from very low level squarely across the submarine. U-468 was sunk, but the burning Liberator crashed into the sea just beyond it; Trigg and his entire crew were killed.

What makes Trigg’s award unique is that there were no Allied survivors to describe what he had done: the only witnesses were the German submariners who survived the sinking. Picked up from the water, they spoke of the airman’s courage in pressing home his attack through their fire, and it was largely on their testimony that the Victoria Cross was recommended and granted — the only VC of the war awarded on evidence supplied by the enemy. It was gazetted on 2 November 1943. Trigg has no known grave and is commemorated on the Malta Memorial.