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It was our seventh operation of our first tour.

We were briefed to bomb Rennes, a German airfield on the Cherbourg peninsula. The whole crew was very easy about this trip, as Don our mid-upper gunner had completed the same trip as a ‘spare bod’ with another crew about three weeks before. He told us that it had been a piece of cake as there was absolutely no fighters or flack at all.

We were briefed to bomb at 15 000 ft but our pilot with the knowledge of the mid-uppers experience decided to bomb at 12 000ft.

Everything went well on the approach to the target, no opposition at all, but as we started the bombing run, all hell broke loose.

During the three weeks between the two ops the Luftwaffe had taken over the airfield and had moved in an enormous amount of light and heavy anti-aircraft guns.

They put up a terrific barrage, mostly light flack, I remember the rear gunner informing the pilot that the shells were whipping up between his guns.

As we approached the target area, our port inner engine was hit and caught fire. The engineer activated the fire extinguishers and put out the fire, then he feathered the engine. We carried onto the target and I released the bombs in a fairly long stick as I called, ‘Bombs gone.’ The starboard inner engine was hit and caught fire. The first reaction of the pilot was to shut the bomb doors, the engineer again put out the fire and feathered the engine.

Now we were down to two engines and consequently our speed was reduced by half and I think we were thinking of clipping our parachutes on. While this was happening I checked for any bomb hang ups and discovered that we still had a 500lb bomb in the bomb bay.

All the hydraulic systems worked off the starboard inner engine and as this was out of action, I was unable to open the bomb doors to release the bomb.

The ‘Lancaster’, being such a great aircraft, could fly on one inner engine, you would lose a bit of height, but it would get you home.
Having lost both our inner engines and with the oil pressure fluctuating badly in the starboard outer engine it was a dicey situation because if that engine had failed we would have been finished, However our engineer nursed that engine along.

Having lost our two engines and at a greatly reduced speed we fell well behind the rest of the bombers on the way home and we felt very vulnerable being on our own with the Luftwaffe fighters about. It seemed to take forever until we reached our base.

We arrived over our base one and a half hours late, in fact the squadron was just about to send telegrams out to our families reporting that we were missing, presumed shot down.

The pilot made his usual approach and landing, but as we touched down, the aircraft did two unexpected ground loops off the runway, the reason being, the port tyre was flat, having been punctured by the ‘flack.’ When the aircraft came to rest you could not see our heels for dust, thinking of that 500lb bomb still on board.

The crew went straight on 6 days leave. When we reported back to the squadron our ground crew informed us that the aircraft had 240 flack holes in it but not one of us received a scratch.

I guess that is why we completed our tour of 30 operations; we were a very lucky crew.

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