There is a delightful story about an Auster in the 1950s at Sydney's Bankstown Airport that was handswung with the throttle incorrectly set and no chocks and took off, all by itself, on its first ever solo.
It buzzed the field (narrowly missing the tower at one point) for a while, flying wider and wider circles and slowly gaining altitude.
Bankstown is very near Kingsford Smith, Sydney's international airport so this was quite alarming, the RAAF were called in and dispatched a Wirraway that intercepted it when it started heading out over the sea.
They returned unsuccessfully claiming the machine gun had frozen and couldn't fire. The story I was told was that was the reason given by the crew to waiting journalists on their return to the Richmond RAAF base, but as they were telling this to a reporters, a whole belt load's worth of empty cartridge cases dropped onto the apron while a ground handler was putting it to bed...
Auster 1, RAAF 0
Anyway the Navy then dispatched 2 brand new, state of the art (well to the RAN anyway) Meteors. They had terrible trouble trying to get their speed down to take a decent shot at the little Auster puttering along minding its own business, their stall speed exceeded the Auster's Vne! Anyway by the time they managed to get into a position to try shooting it - their guns had frozen too (apparently) so returned without result.
Auster 1, RAN 0
Finally the Navy dispatched an aging Sea Fury (they were coming to the end of their service but still in use) that successfully shot the poor old thing down over the sea
Auster 0, RAN 1 in the final.
Again the story I heard was the Sea Fury pilot subsequently painted a small Auster symbol next to the cockpit as a 'kill'.
True story (cannot vouch for the RAAF actually firing after they claimed not to but even if that bit isn't true, it should be
)