November 15/16, 1944
Target for tonight: Essen
Player Number 62
Aircraft #1 (SY-M, M-Matilda)
Crew:
No problems on takeoff despite earlier warnings from ground staff of SY-M tendency for throttles to jam while fully open. Opening night jitters soon made themselves evident once we had joined the bomber stream, when Sgt Agnew cleared the mid-upper turret guns over the North Sea. Rear turret gunner immediately thought the outgoing fire was from a Jerry nightfighter and let loose with a 100-rnd burst. Needless to say the crew of the trailing aircraft was likely unimpressed and kept their distance for the remainder of the outbound flight.
Good visibility over target. Plenty of spotlights, which found us and fixed us in no time at all. Immediate shouts from the mid upper turret of a Jerry fighter off to 9 o'clock had us all looking frantically out to port as the gunner started blasting away at a 109 coming in very fast. The 109's first burst put holes through the floor of the cockpit but little else but he stayed with us for some time before the flak started.
Very heavy flak over target. One burst very close to our starboard wing but our luck held again, even though Jerry was having a very good go with the spotlight. This made TI quite hard to spot and accounted for the poor result — I estimate our run as completely off target despite good vis and FSgt Pooles best efforts.
During our exit from the target area we were tagged by a nightfighter that had got in behind and below us and we were soon trailing fuel from the starboard inboard tank. I immediately took evasive action but could not shake him — his second and third attacks came from underneath and smashed the rear turret guns as well as putting a shell through the wireless and ventilating the cabin floor under my seat. Fortunately he must have lost interest in us after about 15 more minutes of this. To make matters worse it soon became apparent that as well as the fuel leak our autopilot had taken a hit.
A very unnerving time over the ocean watching our fuel gauges was soon ended by the welcome sight of the lights on our airfield, and a relatively smooth landing considering hours behind the controls without the benefit of autopilot. All in all a warm welcome by our German friends with a most unsatisfying result. I estimate the overall damage to Matilda to be repairable in short order despite the damage already mentioned as well as football sized holes on both wing roots.
Respectfully,
F/O K. Weathers
M-for-Matilda
16 Nov 44