I had no room to manoeuvre

The anti-aircraft fire was pretty good up on that coast there, too. A piece of shrapnel went through the crankcase of the engine and lost all the oil. Well, the minute it hit, I knew something serious had happened. And I waved my wings to show that I was turning back, out of the formation, and rest of them to go ahead, and I did. I turned back. And I had about 8000 feet at that time and so I could go about seven or eight miles anyway. And I set the trim tabs and everything minimum and I throttled the engine right back instead of leaving it on. And it kept ticking over, combined speed and glide and so on. I was just hoping that the Germans wouldn’t realize it and wouldn’t chase me back over our own lines. That was all because I had no room to manoeuver at all. I just had to glide and let it go at that and why they didn’t, I wouldn’t know but there weren’t any around at that time. This was anti-aircraft fire, you see, that hit me. And I got back over our lines and I landed at another aerodrome which was a little bit closer from where I was at that time than ours and that was 209 squadron and that happened to be Collishaw squadron. And the boys there treated me royally, and so on, and brought in this thing with a dead stick, you see, and landed it. Oh, I was lucky. Looking back on it now, I guess I’ve been lucky.