We were dogged by nightfighters all the way from the French coast to Samaur. Madden drove the first one off, but not before a chunk was taken out of our port rudder. The next one cause the most trouble, knocking out the heat in the nose, but Oak made him pay for it. LeBlanc identified it as a Me-110 as it spun down in flames — our mid-upper gunner's first!
The flames didn't spoil LeBlanc's night vision, as he spotted the third on our approach to the target, and drove it off. There was no good excuse, then, for our dismal bomb run.
I took The Real Pipperoo down to 10,000 feet for the trip home, as Madden was starting to feel the chill. A flak battery opened up on us as soon as we were within range, and Kroll reported us losing petrol from the outboard starboard tank. He scrambled to transfer as much as he could to the other tanks, but getting home was going to be a close-run thing. Fortunately, we saw no further action, and I set us down at an American B-17 base in Sussex. (We were more fortunate than we realized — post-flight inspection revealed that one of LeBlanc's ammunition boxes was smashed, and two of his guns would soon have been useless.)
F/S Thomas King
Pilot, The Real Pipperoo
May 21, 1944
55 Peckham Damage Points.