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This story is my Granddad Arthur James Kirk’s recollections of Dunkirk. He was known as Warrant Officer Kirk then and was an air gunner in the No. 15 Squadron of the RAF at Mildenhall and flew Lancasters.

We were rudely awakened at 2am that morning and told to report for briefing. Our target was the big gun emplacements on the coast of Normandy at Ouistreham. We had already flown 18 bombing operations, most of them deep into Germany, so a short trip to the French coast and back was regarded as a ‘piece of cake’. Nevertheless this was our first daylight raid, though it was only half light when we took off at 03.40 hours. We had been told, ‘This was D-Day,’ so we expected to see some ships. But as we crossed the channel we saw a spectacle no man had seen before, or is ever likely to see again. We saw ships of every shape and size. We could not see the sea for ships. To us upstairs, it seemed possible to walk across the Channel without getting ones feet wet. There must have been thousands of boats down there.

About 1100 bombers of the RAF took part in this operation. The original plan was to fly at 8000 feet, but this had to be changed because of the clouds and we were told to fly at 2000 feet. It appears that with typical Air Ministry bungling, the Navy had not been informed of the change in height. Any aircraft that flew near a naval vessel in wartime did so at his peril whether he was friend or foe. We heard of at least one Lancaster being shot down by the Navy. With all those aircraft massed in a huge stream in semi-darkness, accidents were bound to happen-and did. I saw two four-engined bombers collide about 400 yards away from us, and both went into the drink in a mass of flames. I saw no parachutes.

Approaching the French coast we drifted a little too near Le Havre, where there was a German airfield, and from where tracers curved up towards us from a couple of light AA guns. A quick turn to starboard soon took us out of range and then we were on the bombing run. Pathfinders had marked the target area, and we pranged it good. A glance in my log-book reveals that we dropped eleven 1000 pound bombs and three 500 pounders, all high explosive. We bombed five minutes before zero hour and I think that would be 04.55 hours, because the whole operation only took us two hours 55 minutes.

As I said at the beginning, it was a piece of cake and I well remember thinking that I would far rather be upstairs in a ‘kite’ then down below with the lads on the beaches. We returned the same night and bombed German troop concentrations at Lisieux. Out aircraft, P for Peter, was our fourth. The previous three had been shot down, but this last one went on to complete 100 operations.

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