Jerry picked us up right at the coast, they really kept hammering at the SW until we were almost at the target and the outboard fuel tank took a pretty bad hit. Flt Eng told the Skipper that the tank was losing fuel pretty fast and transferred what he could save. The skipper, Flt and our Nav had a quick discussion. "That's it then" the skipper told them. Skipper had our bomb aimer drop his load and then put us in a port turn for home. He came on the intercom and let us know what was going on and we kept our eyes open as we headed home.
Just crossing Dover we found a Yank airfield and the skipper quickly brought us down in one piece. The Yanks were great as their maintenance chaps came out and gave our wing tank a quick look and soon they were at fixing it for us. Meanwhile we stayed in the NCO mess and had a wonderful breakfast as the Skipper went to base ops to call our home field and let them know what was going on. We landed at a B-17 airfield and of course we all started talking about our "trade" Lancaster vs Flying Fortress …
C Trimble
Tail Gunner
My Darling