This is the crew of the Jasmine.
A Me-110 jumped us in zone 6. He hit our inboard fuel tank before our tail guns drove him off. Well, the Lt. [Dawson] said we could still hit Bremen and make it to the coast of England. The weather over the target was good and ack-ack was light and didn't hit us. A 109 came in from 3 o'clock level, but his aim was off.
I'm sure that I was able to put 40 percent of the bombs on the target. On the way back an ME-110 got us. He killed the Lieutenant. He also shot out our number 1 engine. Adams [Flt. Engineer] tried to lose him, and neither Pickard [tail gunner] or the devil made any hits. We finally lost him in some clouds, and turned again towards England.
Jasmine was running on fumes by the time we crossed land, and Adams told us all to parachute before he tried to land. We all made it down okay, but Adams didn't make it: we saw the wreck.
— Lt. Harry G. Longfellow, bomb aimer
314th Squadron
Jasmine's inboard fuel tank was hit and was leaking fuel in zone 6. The roll allowed 6 more zones' worth of fuel. As Bremen appeared to be in the middle of zone 7, I decided that the entire zone should be counted as 1 zone towards the fuel leakage.
By deviating course towards to nearest part of England in zone 3, it seemed to me to be theoretically possible to have been able to reach England within the 6-zone allowance.