6. I guess when you think back after all these years, every op had something to make  it stand out. Your first is always a doozy. Personally, on ours, I recall  waiting for something terrible to happen. The waiting was always the hardest part. Once the shooting started, you were too busy to worry.
 On our second trip, still green and eager, we had left the Drop Zone area and were more than somewhat lost. We finally got a fix on our position by the unusual method of low flying over several Jerry fighter dromes, one after another. We could see  them towing kites around by tractor. They sure can put on a great pyrotechnic  display with their rigs consisting of a searchlight with four 20mms cannons. To this day I still can't figure out how a kite can go through all that flack  without looking like a sieve after. We didn't get one hit but there was only one place with all that action so got a great fix and made a fast course change. I believe it was on the same trip that we had just made height and crossed the French coast in cloud and had started to poke through the top when my passenger  in the starboard seat said "Oh look, there is another of our chaps also just out  of the cloud." One fast look showed a JU88(German Night Fighter) before we  ducked back in cloud doing violent evasive action.

Once, we were picked up by a night fighter just as we were running in on our Drop Zone in bright moonlight. God was I scared. So scared that I nearly flew us into the ground trying to get too low. I was actually as low or lower than the trees. Finally we (Tubby), identified him as a Mosquito, before I could do anything more stupid. Fear makes a person take incredible risks at times.
On another occasion, Tubby said we were being tracked by a Jerry with a light in  his nose. ( We had been briefed recently on this new Jerry tactic). We did violent Lancaster roll evasive action till I was too tired to do more, and  finally Tub admitted it must have been a star.

Gil and  I did have a bad prang at Pennfield Ridge OTU. I had maybe 3 or 4 hours on  Venturas and the tower brought us in on a runway with a 90 degree crosswind of  strong force. To make things worse, the runway was ice covered and rough. Venturas landed like hot bricks at best. Anyway in attempting the landing, she drifted off so I crabbed her in but as soon as I leveled the old "B" drifted out again so I tried to take her around again on full boost. She wallowed along  50ftl. up and when I realized she was heading for the trees I tried to bring the  nose up to clear and she immediately stalled and we went in nose first.  When I  came to, I looked for Gil who was pretty groggy and somehow helping each other we staggered out into the snow. We were mightily cut and bruised but lucky she didn't blow. Poor Gil, I think he thought his new sprog pilot had ended his  career early. Frankly I too thought I might be grounded but on my second day in hospital, I was visited by the C.O. and the S/L from the control tower who  apologized for bringing us in on that particular runway. I wonder if Gil still  has a sore back from that prang?

Like most crews, we ended up in the field across the road on occasion when flying Stirlings (I had an ulterior motive though. Eve was staying at the Horse and  Jockey, just down the road for the weekend.) We never had a forced landing as such. Closet thing I guess was when we blew our starboard engine during a 13  aircraft formation. Not worried till I found she would not maintain height at  full power on her port engine so Ed had to find me the closest airdrome. Turned out to be the US base Rattlesden and we were fortunate to make the grass in  front of their runway. We had the usual number of engine fires  etc.

5. Thank heavens none of our crew were ever wounded. We did receive slight flak damage on one trip to France and of course on each and every trip to Arnhem.  We never  crashed but did have a few shaky do's such as the time returning after a successful SOE and finding bad ground fog Tower told us to divert but we claimed  our set was U/S and came in. We landed hot which was normal under the  circumstances and would have been OK except suddenly looming out of the fog  appears several 'Erks' on bikes.  Since flying was washed out, they were taking  a short-cut to barracks via the main runway. By violent maneuvers including  massive braking, we avoided chopping said lads into Erkburgers but in doing so  tore our brake linings. Cut the engines but Albemarles with their tricycle landing gear moved mighty fast so I didn't stop till we were nicely wrapped in  barbed wire in the middle of the highway. While waiting for assistance, along came a convoy of US army trucks. The lead came to a fast stop and this large Negro soldier got out with eyes like saucers. "What the hell are you doing with that airplane on this road?" We ended up having a good laugh even though I was on the carpet the next day.

History 2