大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Allan Price on behalf of Dan Brooks and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

During the war I was a Front Gunner in a B24 Liberator bomber. This particular night, the target was Bridge 147 on the Burma/Siam railway. The date was 29th March 1945.

The all-up take-off weight was 58,000 pounds and the bomb load consisted of 6 one thousand pound bombs, each with a seven and a half second fuse - suitable for low level bombing from 200 feet or thereabouts.

After a four hour flight we found that the bridge was heavily defended and on the run-in to the target I spotted an A/A gun emplacement. I opened fire with my twin guns (point five calibre). At one point I was directly over the gun emplacement and was firing directly into it with devastating effect.

In my enthusiasm, I tried to get a better aim by getting off the seat of my turret and in doing so my parachute harness caught on the latch of the turret doors. The doors immediately sprung open and disappeared below with a loud bang - leaving me hanging halfway outside!

The force of the slipstream was incredible and I only remained part of the aircrew by hanging tightly on to my gun sight.

I eventually managed to haul myself back into a position of relative safely, unaware that we had just dropped our bombs on the bridge, and that we had been hit by light A/A fire - causing one of our engines to emit a thin stream of oily smoke. This was a rather grim situation to be in when still 4 hours from base.

The problem now was to get back home in one piece. Eventually the pilot made a brilliant lopsided landing in the dark, at a forward airfield at Chittagong.

The next morning we observed with awe that we had flown through, and landed, on an airfield surrounded by barrage balloons.

At the debriefing, we submitted an aircraft with a hole in the starboard outer engine, a front turret with no doors, and en engineer with a head wound caused by an exploding oxygen bottle - not to mention some rather scared aircrew.

But at least Bridge 147 no longer existed.

It was nearly always so!

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