大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by GMR Action Desk on behalf of Ken Hulton and has been added to the site with his permission.
We were on a bombing run, going to Frankfurt. An aircraft above us, bomb doors open, released the bombs and an incendiary went between the port outer and the port inner engines. As a result the port outer engine had to be stopped and within half an hour the port inner engine had to be stopped too. We dropped our bombs and made for home. We were given permission to land at Conningsby and just as we reached the end of the runway the starboard engines cut out due to shortage of fuel !!! We had come home on a wing and a prayer.
That was the first time we had been to Frankfurt. I was 18 years old and wondering what the hell was going on because there were lots of planes being shot down.
On another occasion we went to Stuttgart and all the navigational equipment became unserviceable. It was necessary to use visual features to find our way. We could see fires in the distance caused by other bombings so we bombed those. We managed to complete the mission and find our way back.
This happened yet again{ navigational equipment unserviceable} on our way to Stuttgart. Somebody didn鈥檛 like us; they didn鈥檛 want us to go there again.
Another time we were going to Norway to bomb the Turpitz. This was in daylight. We had to land at Wick to refuel and on our way over the North Sea my pal was in another aircraft flying alongside and I waved to him. The next thing was , his aircraft exploded. All that we saw was a pall of black smoke and different colours falling with it On return to base and into the barrack block it seemed unreal that there was no one in his room.
I completed my first tour of operations with Main Force Bombers and my second with the Path Finder Force. Both tours on Lancasters. I did 55 operations altogether.

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