"We were not all heroes..."

We were not all heroes. There were some among us who were not heroes, at all. There were some among us that, at very early on in the war, decided to get around this war thing with their whole skin by doing some devious things. Now, let's suppose, the cap-, the group captain seizes off here, and we take off and we all fly down, a thousand of us, and we fly down there, and over there, and over there, and drop bombs here. But some of the guys said, "Well, why should I risk my tail? Well, all the flak is gonna be here, the fighters are gonna be here..." Every moment that you're in the air is a moment of threat, absolutely, there's a thousand threats. And so, so they say, "Well, I'll tell you what, I'll, since they're going to follow me on the radar anyway, I'll go down to Beachy Head and then I'm gonna head out for the other way point, across here, on the Caen," or wherever it is, "and then I'll be gone. Now, the next time they see me is gonna be when I'm on my way back." Right, let's suppose the, the way back from there is, might be here and then across, etcetera. Fine, well, the guy says, "Ok", and they, the crew has to agree on this by the way, and they say, well, why, why expose our tails to that? Why don't we just come here and go halfway across and then turn around, go back up here. We know exactly how long it has to be before we have to come back, you know, say 3 hours and 58 minutes, or whatever. So what, we'll, we'll use the 3 hours and 58 minutes. We'll go up here, drop our bombs, nice and safe in the ocean and then come back, on the exact place of the, the real landmark, the landmark on the way coming back. And let's suppose the landmark was going to be here. And we'll just join the stream. We know exactly when they're coming back and so those thousand airplanes, we'll just become one of them again, and then fly back to our base (inaudible). And they did it. They did it. Some of them did it. Now, it turns out that at the same time, the Germans, who were very clever, they were also joining that stream and so because this thousand airplanes are all coming back, and the British don't know a German airplane from another one. So, they joined the stream, and they would follow the bombers back and shoot them down when they were approaching in our own home land, right. So the British said, ok, we'll fix you guys. We will invent a thing called IFF - Identification of Friend or Foe. Well, it turns out that one night, they forgot to turn their IFF off. And so the IFF stayed on and, of course, the radar, the British radars, were following this thing, and it went down here and a half, you know, for a half an hour, and then back up here, flew around here, dropped its bombs, the IFF was still on. And, and, and so then they came back in with their IFF and he said, "Oh my God, we forgot to turn it off. Well, too bad, we're into it now." And of course they followed him all the way back to his base, and the CO was waiting for him when they got there. And, of course, the, the, the pilot got dishonourable discharge with seven years in prison, and the navigator got five years in prison.