Bomber Raid Into Germany

It was normal until we were on the bombing run and we were informed by our information, as far as they knew, that the Germans didn’t have effective radar at that time to control search lights and that search lights had to search for aircraft. Well that was not the case, as a matter of fact, because we were on our bombing run, flying straight and level, when suddenly we were coned in a whole lot of powerful blue search lights that must have been radar controlled or something. Because they were pointed right at us before they were turned on and this happened instantly. Of course it was very disturbing, I had to do evasive action because than heavy flak started bursting all around us. And as a matter of fact, we had the bomb doors open and the bombs still on, which left the aircraft not too manoeuvrable. And maybe over reaction on my part I’m not sure but anyway we went into an inverted spin and lost about... we were at 17,000 feet, I got it flying straight and level at 4000 feet. So we lost that much height, which is a couple of miles in a very short time. And we selected a target and dropped our bombs on it but one of the problems was that the controls were damaged to some extent and the air plane was uncontrollable as far as direction was concerned so we found our self flying further and further into Germany. And then we had, we would be saturated with light flak, we were fairly low (inaudible) and heavy flack too. And we had enemy recognition cartridges about a dozen of them. We’d fire one of those off and the anti-aircraft fire would cease until they did some kind of check, I suppose. Then they would start up again.