We first encountered hostile activity approaching the target zone when an unwanted caller raked "Jazz Music" along the bottom of our plane, some cannon fire ripping through and catching the Navigator in his left arm. The unwanted caller was a Ju-88 with what seemed like a seasoned pilot, peppering us with more cannon fire as we tried to corkscrew our way out of it. Finally, he gave up the chase.
Then we hit flak, three shuddering explosions rocking the plane from the heavy batteries surrounding the aqueduct. Setting the autopilot and aided by the TIs and Oboe, it was a relief to hear "bombs gone!" He even added "I think I got the bullseye", which was encouraging.
Banking around and heading for home, we found we were under under attack again, this time from a Me110. Fortunately for us, whoever was shooting must have been at the bottom of his class at Luftwaffe Nightfighter Gunnery school. We scored some hits and Cowley reported it flaming from one of its engines and spiralling out of control, disappearing into the night sky.
That was when we were able to assess the damage. We had a fuel leak from No.2 tank, enough to get us back over the North Sea but not enough to get us to base. Also, the tail compartment oxygen supply had been knocked out. If we didn't dive, Cowley would pass out and die before we got home. So we dived to 10,000'.
At this altitude, fingers were crossed that local flak didn't get us between here and the coast. The Germans still held northern Holland and just north of Arnhem, we were caught in a searchlight and flak batteries opened up. Fortunately, apart from shaking us up a bit, there was no apparent damage. There was some sporadic flak over the coast but then we were out over the North Sea.
There were radio reports of nightfighters operating close to home on intruder missions. Because we were out of the main stream, we hoped we would be lucky. We wouldn't get to know straight away how they had fared until we got home.
We managed to let RAF Little Snoring know we were coming in for an emergency landing. Lancs had been based here in '43 and now it was a base for Mosquitos.
We were about to make our approach when a Ju-88 appeared from the darkness at our 6 o'clock. Cowley immediately engaged, hitting the Junkers but it still opened up on us. There were some hits on the starboard wing, damaging the aileron but most of them were on the rear turret and waist areas. Ammo feed to the rear turret was disrupted, shortly followed by the gun controls being disabled. We didn't have enough fuel to evade and all we had were hopes and prayers that we could make a safe landing. Ultimately, our foe decided discretion was the better part of valour and chose to break off the fight than go in for the kill and he was last seen heading back towards the North Sea.
Our tailwheel was damaged and adding that to other damage, our landing was very bumpy but we were down and all safe.
Our hosts bandaged up Pritchard's injury, provided a truck to give us a lift back to our base and said they'd patch up the Boar and fly it back to us the next day. All we could hope for was that Briggs's claim could be confirmed that we were bang on target '— literally.