German nightfighters picked us up when we made landfall, and dogged us all the way to Berlin. Fitzgerald spotted the first one, but not the second. I managed to keep us out of the sights of both. He saw the next one coming up behind us and drove it off with some good shooting. The fourth one, which caught us over Berlin's outskirts, was more of a problem, hitting us in both wings, but Akaste seemed to shrug it off.
I threaded our way between the searchlights, but there was so much flak over the city that that getting hit was practically inevitable. One burst took our our starboard aileron, and threw Geist's run off the TI's.
One more nightfighter latched on to us after we turned for home. I was doing my best to prevent him getting behind us, when suddenly we found ourselves behind him! Haas, our mid-upper gunner, blasted him out of the sky for his second in two missions!
I was hoping that the Germans had given up on us, but we ran into two more nightfighters over the North Sea. The first one knocked Geist's heat out before we got away, and the second took our our port flap. I took us down to 10,000 feet for the remainder of the trip home.
Pilot Officer Leo Feldman
Pilot, Akaste
January 20 1944
70 Peckham Damage Points