Climbing an Invisible Ladder

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Description

Mr. Taschuk recalls seeing a Lancaster accidentally drop their payload on another Lancaster directly below them, and seeing the bomb aimer fall from the damaged plane.

Transcription

I saw this one, one day time trip, this, it was a useless waste of life and these two Lancasters were one above the other, right above. In day time I figure, "What the hell, they must be green crews? " And we were over the target bomb doors open and I figured, "Oh no, oh no." Cause they're right above each other, I don't know why the gunners didn't look up or the wireless air gunner look up you know but... And out came the bombs and it took off...the bombs took off the nose of the lower Lancaster, and the bomb aimer was over in his position with no parachute on, and the bombs, he came out, he fell out of the air plane and you know, as he fell he was trying to climb a ladder on the way up. I can imagine the horror he was going through. He was trying to climb back up and I watched him all the way until he, in amongst these bombs. I figured, what a waste, you know, just stupidity. You know like if he got killed in action or something like that, you know but just to get, a stupid thing like that, one above the other and nobody saw him. But to a, they never even find his dog tags, he went down there in amongst all this cluster of bombs, so that was, I still think of that.

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