Leading the Target

But one of the things you do, when you first get in the air plane after taking off, is, is cock the guns. Hit a toggle switch, like an arm that you gotta reach up in there and, and cock the gun. Anyway, then you had a fire and safety outfit that you had to put on to fire on safe. But that was the first, that was the first thing you had to do. But to fire at something, well, then you trained that you allowed, guessed at the speed of what the fighter is, and in what position he's in, so that you can allow, as if you were shooting at geese or ducks, how many rads you used to call it because of the ring, how many rads you had to allow to hit that over here. It rather was just like shooting a duck. Gotta, gotta lead them, same with the fighter. But, most time, they sit out on the, on the beam somewhere and then they, then they come in on the curver pursuit and you try to come into the back. But, but you have to follow them in, so it changes, but you, I think, you're pretty excited when you saw the one anyway. I don't know if you'd do what you're told to do, but that's training. As I say, when, right at the very first, they mould you into what you want to be. But they're sitting, the fighter's sitting up there with cannons, and here we are sitting here with a, a deer gun. A .303, an old .303. But, but it was mainly to deter them, if you want to call it that. Because, really, you didn't shoot that many down. Unless you happen to get lucky with... and they run into it. We figured that we got one, one night over Wesseling, which was the oil in the Ruhr Valley. You'd see them coming over there. It was, actually, it was a twin engine Junkers 88 that we saw, that come in. He was off onto the, onto the... well, I would call it the right-hand side, it is on the right side, but, you know. And then there was a chance there, so we took it. The rear gunner opened up and, and so did the mid upper. And later, it wasn't too long after that we saw the explosion on the ground, so... But these are the probables, probables that you can't confirm it as a kill.