Bombing Runs

At that stage of the war we were bombing mostly oil targets, oil producing towns and then a few railway junctions, transportation so basically we were after oil and secondary after transportation. We went on one, about our twentieth trip and as we got across the English Channel one of our engines quit and they couldn’t get it started again. So the skipper said, “Look, we’ve only got three engines, should we go back? ” You know, he’s asking the crew. “No let’s get it in!” So we flew on three engines which meant we were very gradually losing altitude but we were falling behind so that as we got to the target, we were the last ones over the target and we were down to about 12,000 feet by this time so we bombed. I guess they didn’t expect anybody to come that late because there were no fighters. There was still lots of flak and then by the time we got back across the channel, we were down to about 5,000 feet and then we just slipped into a Southern England aerodrome but we got the trip in. We just wanted to get the trips in and get away from this kind of work.