The flight to the target was quiet, however as we expected, we were jumped by an Me-110 as we were nearing our target. The jerry pilot peppered us with some eratic fire but did no damage before Sgt. Widowson in the nose turret replied with some accurate fire, hitting one of the Me-110s fuel tanks causing it to explode in quite spectacular fashion.
Unfortunately the fire from the Me-110 drew the attention of the searchlights to our section of sky, and so opened a hellish barrage of flak fire. We took a bit of a battering but were thankfully left in one piece.
As we begun to set ourselves up for the bomb run we were jumped by an Me-109. Pilot F/O Martin Geraldson was killed in the hail of fire that also damaged our port wing, starboard tail plane and took out the upper turret guns. At this point Sgt. Duncan helped move Martin and I took over the controls.
I set up the plane as best I could for the bomb run however Sgt. Widowson reported that he was confident he had hit the target and hit it well.
As we turned back for home we were once again jumped by an Me-110. Thankfully it couldn't hit us as I did my best to take evasive action.
The landing was ok.
Sgt. Andrew Baker
Flight Engineer, H-Hunter