HIT BY FLAK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 10 September 1941, Page 6

HIT BY FLAK

R A F. BOMBER OVER BERLIN STORY OF FLIGHT HOME Rugby, Sept. 8. Some idea of the defences of Berlin and of what some of the R.A.F. crews had to face may be gained from the \ story of the crew of a Manchester, j On the way to Berlin they avoided five enemy fighters and had no other ! trouble till they were over the city itself. “Then we were hit by flak,'’ the pilot raid, “but went on and bombed. The j port engine was found to be rapidly getting hotter and to prevent it from : seizing and probably catching fire I feathered the airscrew am’, stopped the j engine. There seemed to be little l chance of getting such a long way back but we set course for home and hoped for the best. Over much of the enemy country we were flying at about 5000 feet and a? this height we had to pass through a large belt of searchlights. We got through then; all right, I but later we had to come down even I lewer. "When we leached the Dutch coast Ij decided to attempt the crossing, though 1 tho ight our chances of reaching the English coast were very slight. All | the way back the rest of the crew j kept jettisoning everything we could i spare Eventually we landed at the ! first aerodrome after crossing the coast ; with very little petrol to spare. N6t ! one of us received a scratch, though ! the bombei was peppered with shrap- j nel holes throughout. On landing I found that the dinghy had been shot ; away and 1 got rather a shock when I thought how we might have come down in the sea ” The observer ol a Wellington had a very different story to tell. He had been on 42 raids before, but this he described as "One of the best nights I ever had. Everything went like clock- j work The navigation was O K., the searchlights didn't worry us unduly and the flak was not too bad. You could j see everything perfectly and we had no ; trouble with fighters. We went straight i in, found what we were looking for and : came straight out.”—B.O.W