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This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Dennis Ball with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In June 1943 I was a flight engineer on a Sunderland aircraft. We were on what was known as a ‘slug patrol’ in the Bay of Biscay, which involved laying land mines all along the west coast when we were attacked by 6 Junker 88s fighter aircraft. We were so badly knocked about that we had to force land in the Bay of Biscay. Luckily as soon as we landed the dingies automatically inflated on the wing. Our wireless operator managed to get a message out detailing our position but we spent 2 days drifting in the dingy until the third day when we were picked up a naval destroyer on its way from Gibraltar. Fortunately we had some standby rations, which kept us going but we all got badly sunburnt. There was not much to do in the dingy of course except pray and think. I don’t think we talked about much except how lucky we were and about how we were going to get out of this situation. We were all scared. Every time we went flying we were scared but you just coped with the fear and doubt. You never thought it would happen to you, we were always aware of course of what could happen but we always though it would happen to someone else.

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