I suppose it really all began about half way when Lt Jackson (Crew#36 ) lost an engine and turned back. I heard the lead ship call for a spare to fill the No.3 spot. I noticed later that the spot was filled, but I did not pay much attention to the ship number. As you may remember we were second in the division that day. I was flying the No.7 spot and had a pretty good view of the whole show.

At the I.P. Attlebridge turned off at a 45 degree angle, that left us in the lead and our squadron was the first outfit over the target. We were six minutes from ”bombs away” when the flak started, about 15 to 20 bursts at a time, accurate, and bursting constantly. We got a total of 16 minutes in all. I remember seeing one burst directly in front of the left wing of the lead pilot, and the wing passed through the smoke while it was still expanding. How he missed going down I’ll never know. The burst took one of his toes off.

Because I could see No.3 spot more clearly than the other positions in the tight formation, I was watching your ship for bombs away, still not knowing it was you. Almost instantly after the bombs left the belly of your ship, I saw the flash of the shell that got you. I never saw the smoke, so it must have burst on your left or inside of your bomb bay. The whole thing was like a nightmare. I was so terrified it was like watching a show. I was scared, and had been for six minutes, to the point where I actually did not know if I was really seeing what I thought I saw or not. It was not until after I got down and compared notes with others that I was positive.

At any rate, the flash appeared under your ship. A figure – I assume it was the radio-operator – tumbled crazily out of the forward end of the bomb bay and fell end over end. I think the man was dead, as he did not appear to struggle at all as he fell. He struck the left wing of the No.6 man, and bounced off into space and out of sight. I looked back at your ship, both bomb bays were streaming fire for about 30 feet. You held in the formation for a moment , and then peeled up in a wing over, and that was the last I saw. I called the tail, and Schrader saw six chutes appear.

We were twisting violently to avoid the flak, but it did not seem to do much good. We got lots of holes, but only two that were nearly serious. One chunk about 5 inches long came in the left waist, creased every corrugation in the floor, hit an ammo can, broke into three pieces and went out the right waist leaving three holes. A chunk about an inch long came in under the flight deck and went half way through a full box of flares, finally imbedding itself about an inch from the firing pin without setting it off.

Well, we twisted and turned, and after about 16 minutes we got out of the flak. Then we took stock. Cobb tapped me and said, “Don’t look now, but I think that was our boys Shinn and Micko that went down”. I grabbed the formation sheet and checked and saw that your ship was missing. Then the tail called in, the lead ship of the second squadron was also gone. We landed back at the base. About the third ship behind us had the nose-wheel shot out and slid about half a mile on the wheels and the nose. They changed runways and the second ship in had a tire gone and went spinning away through the dirt. Another pilot crash landed and washed a ship out at an emergency field. Every person was thoroughly shot.

We hated like heck to go back to the barracks that night. We didn’t know what to do. We knew that your baby was expected any day, and we thought maybe we should see if the “missing message” could be held up just a couple of days to see if maybe you got down O.K. somewhere, and yet it didn’t seem right to hold up the message. The chaplain said he couldn’t do anything about it, anyway, so that solved our problem.