“Here is my account of what happened to Aircraft 42-94963 (from the 788th?) on Christmas Day, 1944, Sefka and Hanks, two pilots.

I was called at the last minute to fly with Sefka s crew to replace his right waist gunner who was ill. My own crew (Art Bolter, pilot) wasn't flying that day. In addition, I was one mission behind them, so I was chosen (by mistake I was told later). The call came so late that I barely had time to get everything together before take off time. In my notes written after returning to Rackheath I said, "I saw the sun rise at 10,000 feet on this Christmas Day, but almost didn't see it set". My mission #17 on Christmas Day is one that I will never forget.

Everything went fine during assembly and we were soon on our way to the target, Mechemick, just over the German border. Just about the time we crossed our lines we started getting occasional flak. However, we did get a couple of bursts close enough to put a few holes in the plane. The target area was clear and we dropped our incendiary bombs over the town starting fires everywhere.

About five minutes after bombs away at 12:10 p.m. we were attached by 8 ME-109’s from about 5 o'clock. The enemy planes kept their nose pointed at us until they got in close. Everyone thought they were our P-51 fighter escort. On the first pass the tail gunner thought he got one of them before his turret was knocked out and set on fire. His left gun was smashed and he lost his oxygen, but the fire went out a few minutes later.

After the first attack, my notes say we were next hit by FW-190's from about 10 o'clock. (I am not too sure of this though, it could have been the same 8 MS 109s coming back.) In any event, we really caught it this time — all engines were damaged except number 4. They also knocked the dome off the top turret and put it out of commission. Gas was coming out the left side so bad that it looked like a torrential rainstorm on the left waist window. It was at this time that I noticed a fire in the radio equipment over the bombay area. I was able to smother this fire with a blanket. I think the radio fire started from shrapnel from a 20mm shell. This same shrapnel also damaged the index fingers of my heated gloves and lacerated both of my fingers as I was reaching for the left waist gun during the first attack.

When we lost our engines we dropped from 23,000 feet to 18,000 feet and then on down to 10,000 feet in a short period of time. Number one engine was windmilling, number two was running at half power and number three was feathered. The pilot told us to prepare to bail out when it looked like we were going to be under attack again by a lone plane. Our nose and right waist were the only useable guns. It turned out that the lone plane was a P-51 responding to our distress flare.

At this point we were able to get some more power of #2 engine, and then lightened the plane by throwing every thing out that wasn't tied down. We then headed for an emergency fighter airstrip in Belgium. (All these years I thought it was Luxemburg but my notes and your article say it was Belgium.

Our next problem was that since number 3 was out, we had no hydraulic system to aid in landing the plane. At the last minute as we approached the air field, the main gear was cranked down and shortly before touchdown the engineer was able to kick the nose down.

We still had no flaps or brakes and coming in hot on a short runway was a major problem. The two pilots and the engineer stayed up front while everyone else went to the back and held on to whatever we could find; I used the left gun mount. The landing was a good one, but it had to be fast with no flaps. The pilot dragged the tail down

the runway to try and slow us down. (Also, I don't think he knew that the nose wheel was down.) My notes say we ran out of runway and eventually hit another B-24. I know we went across some rough ground for quite a period of time before we crashed. I know it doesn't sound right for planes to be parked off the end of a runway, so maybe we did swerve to one side or the other. In any event, I Judged that we hit at 50 to 60 mph and bodies went flying and hit the bombay bulkhead and ended up in the ball turret hole. I ended up on top of the pile. I don't think any of us were knocked out. If we were, it was only momentarily. The plane broke in half at the bombay and started to bum. Needless to say we all got out in a hurry through the left waist window. We all thought it would blow up any second.

(I don't think anyone in the back of the plane was injured except for minor bumps and bruises. The navigator did get cut on his head and later had it bandaged.)

The pilot and co-pilot somehow got hung in their seat harness and couldn't get out of their seats. The plane's flight engineer and a ground crew member from the emergency field where we landed tried to cut them free. The heat forced the flight engineer to leave the plane. The ground crew member (possibly a medic) had to be forced to leave the plane by other ground personnel before he could free the pilots. He was hysterical when he got in the ambulance with the rest of us. He said the pilots were pleading with him to get them out.

We spent Christmas night at the fighter base and went to Brussels the next day. We spent that night In Brussels, and I think we left the next day for England.

You would think this would be a routine flight back, but the way things had been going lately, nothing was routine. In Brussels the left waist gunner and myself were assigned to a B-24 to fly back to England with a crew from another group. The plane was one that had a problem, but had been repaired enough to be flown back to England for additional maintenance. We were given just enough gas to get us back to the repair depot for B-24's In England.

The take-off and flight back was uneventful, but as we were about to pass over the pilot's home field, we ran out of gas in one of the engines. The pilot said, "I am going to land the plane at this field since I am familiar with it and know nothing about the other field.” It was almost dusk at this time, so around he came to make his landing but he lined up on the wrong runway which was not plowed and was covered with snow. The tower shot off red flares and said go around, so we went back up with our three engines screaming and tried again. The results were the same and the tower was shooting its red flares and saying go around again, and the pilot said, "the hell with it, I am already out of gas In one engine and I don’t know when the others might quit, so I am landing now". I guess the tower thought we were going to hit them because as we went by the tower, people were coming out of it like rats leaving a sinking ship. When the plane touched down and the brakes were applied, we Just kept sliding down the snowy runway, and off the end. It was the same bumping sensation that I had gone through a few days earlier. I thought to myself, not again - we're going to crash.

This time the plane stopped before we hit anything.

I called the 788th and had them send a truck over to pick the two of us up and return us to Rackheath. So three days later and a few nerve racking episodes we were back”