EVENTFUL TRIP

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21993, 19 June 1941, Page 5

EVENTFUL TRIP

Flight In Burning Bomber Attacks By Nazi Fighter (Rec. 7.34 p.m.) RUGBY, June 17. Their aircraft in flames, the rear gun out of action and a fighter attacking, the crew of a heavy bomber came near to baling out out over Germany on Sunday night. They had bombed a target at Cologne and were flying away when they were attacked by a fighter. “We were just passing through some searchlights when suddenly there was a terrific rattling and banging underneath and behind our aircraft,” said the captain. A fighter had come up on our tail and was firing with cannon and machine-guns, but only bruised his skin. The rear-gunner was unable to return the enemy fire as his turret had developed a fault on the outward journey and was out of action. The second pilot upped the shoulder of the captain who looked back and saw part of the inside of the aircraft behind the main spar on fire. The window curtains and fabric along one side of the fuselage was burning and oil was spurting from two punctured pipes. There was every danger of the fire - spreading rapidly. “When I looked back I thought it was all over with us. I never thought we could get the flames out. To make matters worse, the telephone set which links the members of the crew also failed. Tearing off the fabric to keep the fire from spreading, stamping out flames and smothering them with cushions snatched from a bunk, two of the crew fought the fire while the pilot flew on doing his best by evasive action to avoid further attacks from the fighter. The fighter, a Me 110, closed in to within 50 yards. The rear-gunner could see it plainly. Again came the thud of the enemy’s fire as his bullets hit the bomber and the captain could see tracer bullets flying past his cockpit. For the third time the fighter came in and in this attack the second pilot was wounded but was able to scramble along the fuselage and warn the rest of the crew that they would have to bale out if they could not get the flames under control. The front and rear-gunner left their turrets and on the way from the tail of the aircraft the rear-gunner fell through the escape hatch in the floor. In the dark he could not see that the cover of the hatch had been knocked off. Only the guide ropes which he was holding saved him from dropping right through and out of the aircraft. Meanwhile the wireless operator attempted to send a signal but the set was no longer working. It took about 10 minutes to put out the fire. “It seemed an age,” said one of the crew. ‘The Hun sheered off after the third attack and we had no more trouble.” Flying on the captain found that he could not maintain height. When the bomber reached the Dutch coast searchlights picked it up and it came under the fire of the ground defences. But it was not hit. Over the North Sea the crew threw out their ammunition and flares to lighten the aircraft. Eventually they reached the English coast and found a landing ground, but because the flaps had been damaged and the air speed indicator made useless, the captain decided, since it was still dark to fly around and wait for the dawn before attempting to land. The hydraulic system, too, had been put out of action. The crew managed, by using the emergency system, to get the undercarriage down and locked. When the bomber landed the absence of the air speed indicator and flaps inevitably caused the pilot to come in too fast. The bomber raced across the aerodrome, missed a gun emplacement and a small concrete building by inches and finally tipped up on its nose in a patch of freshly dug ground—without further injury to the crew.