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On the 20th April 1944, our mission number 10 was performed in 5 hours and 45 minutes. The purpose of this mission was the bombing of the Nazi buzz bomb sights which were commonly called ski ramps. These sights from the air took the common shape of a ski and in the bend there was a small building which was the control of the future.
On this one we lacked the use of a navigator resulting in the bombardier being told ‘today you have to act as a navigator’ and they gave us a nose gunner. It was this mans first or second tour of duty and also his last. The IP or turning point of this mission was a fix on the G box located off the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel at which time the bombardier located himself in the nose for the bomb run and dropping of the same. About five minutes on the run we were suddenly hit directly by a burst of flak just under the pilots station and apparently we were severed in several connections to the control panel, damaging both inboard engines and the external right ones super-charger, as related is common practice when an engine shows signs of trouble it is automatically manually feathered. Our pilot, welcome John Kirby realizing the situation we were in started to unfeather the engines, number one luckily caught on, but on number two and three there was no such luck, and 4 just more or less wind, for the super charger was shot out. The bombardier also realised a problem and immediately jettisoned the bombs and with the pilot asking for a heading and the bombardier not knowing exactly where he has, he said to the pilot ‘see that water, head for it.’
While we were dropping like a ton of bricks we were given orders by welcome John to lighten the ship, which meant throwing anything movable overboard (ammo, guns, clothes and any other equipment that could be moved).
Meanwhile the acting navigator got his bearings and drew a straight line from the present sight to the base at Horham, England and gave the heading to the pilot who was doing a great job to keep us flying on one engine. All of a sudden we hear screeching in our headsets and we see we are directly over London with balloon barrages overhead, we immediately did a 180 turn and skirted the city, then got back on course.
We flew straight into the field, beating our own group formation back to the field. When we landed and traipsed to the hand, apparently the ground crew had heard our predicament literally, and physically cried, mainly due to our safe return as well as the ship being brought back.

Since that time, thanks to welcome John Kirby, it has been thought of by the men who flew that mission that we have been living on borrowed time.
The count was 196 holes in the ship, and yet not one injury.

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