The Fear in the Sky: Vivid Memories of Bomber Aircrew in World War Two by Pat Cunningham

Author:Pat Cunningham [Cunningham, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783036301
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-09-18T21:00:00+00:00

On that first day, having ‘arrived’ at St Eval, we had discovered that we were one of three new crews posted in. Of the crews we were replacing, one had been lost from St Eval, another had been operating from Gibraltar when they failed to return from a patrol, but the third, more happily, represented a crew and a Hudson who were being rested together, the crew having successfully completed their operational tour and the aircraft having run out of airframe hours.

After a day or so the first of the replacements went off on patrol. Eight hours later, when they landed, the rest of us new chums were all agog to find out about the way these operational met flights actually panned out. On the face of it flying down over the Bay and back with nothing but sea all the way did not sound all that exciting. Even boring, perhaps.

‘We met a Ju88,’ Sergeant-Pilot Tiebeck said dourly.

And that’s virtually all any of them had to say. Except that when we went to look at their aircraft it brought to mind a colander; there were holes everywhere. They had met a Junkers Ju88 with a vengeance! Not so boring, then!

‘But how did you let it get so close?’ we asked the gunner, wonderingly.

‘Thought it was a bloody Beaufighter,’ he snarled.

And only when we rushed away to treble-check the aircraft-recognition silhouettes of the two did we see how similar they were.

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