We were expecting the flght over the channel to be relatively quiet and were surprised when we were jumped by an Me-110 as we approached half distance. Jerry peppered us on a few passes hitting the #4 engine oil tank and knocking out our #2 engine before my mid-upper gunner blew him out of the sky. The loss of the #2 engine meant that the rest of our approach to the target would be slow going and exposed us to a much greater risk of being picked up by patrolling Me-110s.
As we crossed the northern coast of Germany we were almost immediately picked up by an Me-110. In all it had roughly six passes at us but thankfully the worse it did was turn the rafts into swiss cheese. Frustratingly my evasive manoeuvring and our defensive fire did little to bring the encounter to end sooner.
As were setting up for our final approach to the target we were once again picked up by patrolling Me-110s. Thankfully my evasive manoeuvring proved to be more successful this time round and we were left without a scratch.
The bomb run could not have gone any better. We avoided the searchlights, patrolling 'Wild Boar' and flak, and dropped our bombs on target.
With the bombs gone we were able to pick up speed and head for home. We were quickly over the sea and again picked up by an Me-110 in the same area we had passed through on the way to our target. We had it spotted and our evasive action seemed to be doing the trick, however I must have taken a wrong turn as on it's third pass it caught us in a hellish burst of fire. It knocked out the port rudder and waist oxygen supply, forcing us to drop below 10,000ft.
The remainder of the flight was uneventful and the landing went well.
F/L William Calmers, Pilot — H-Hunter