17 July, 1944
Lieutenant Thomas and the crew of Victorious reporting.
This was the deepest into Germany we've ever gone. The chaps were quite worried, but this mission turned out to be quite uneventful. We encountered Jerry over zone 7. He was a 110. We didn't hit him, and lost him in the clouds. Afterwards we ran up against another ME-110 and two Junker-88's in zones 8, 9, and 10. Smith [tail gunner] claims to hit one of the 88's, but doesn't know if he killed him.
The target was socked in with dastardly poor weather. Flak was light, and didn't come near us. With the weather, we don't know if any of our bombs were on target or not, though we did our best.
On the return leg of the journey, a 110 caught up with us. He damaged the tail wheel and shot out our number 1 engine. We were able to lose him, and made it back to base.
—Lt. Dick L. Thompson
Victorious, 314th Bomber Squadron