...But the highlight....if one can call it that....of our missions was the one we made to Dessau on may 28, 1944 in Germany. The pilot on that one was Bernard Connors. On my bomb run we were hit and the plane began to fall. We were in BAD trouble and had lost two engines and one only pulled half power. We had to lighten the plane and I had to dump the bombs but didn't want to waste them as they were a new type called RDX, very powerful. I asked Connors if he would let me keep them for a minute as there was a small town just ahead and I would dump on that place. He said OK and I took over and made a perfect hit. That little place may have contained anything from factoris to miltary bases but it really blew up. Then we proceeded to try to save ourselves.

We had already fallen from 24,000 feet, our bombing altitude, to about 15,000 and were still losing altitude. We proceeded to lighten the plane by dumping out anything heavy but had to keep the guns and ammunition for a while as we were then under attack from two German fighters who were looking for strays and cripples. Fortunately, we fought them off but after that we were still falling and so threw out not only the guns and ammunition, but got tools and unbolted the ball turret and dropped that! Meanwhile, the navigator was trying to put us on a course to France as we didn't want to go down in Germany. We kept radioing for fighter escort to protect us and managed to stop losing altitude at about 8000 feet. The sun was already setting in our faces making it rough to see ahead but we decided to see if we could reach the English Channel where we could ditch and hopefully get picked up by Air-Sea Rescue boats.

The next thing we knew we were flying over the city of Antwerp where they were shooting us with rockets and other anti aircraft. Suddenly we saw four fighter planes diving at us and we thought it was the end. But then we saw that they were American P-38s sent from England to find and help us. They saw our predicament and immediately lowered their wing flaps and wheels to slow them down and flew a distance below us to attract the anti-aircraft fire away from us and to themselves. Four absolutely selfless and marvelous pilots! They stayed with us until we were over the Channel and as we seemed to be holding our altitude and our one and a half engines were still holding up we decided to try to reach the emergency landing field at Dover. Then we got cocky and when we crossed the English coast decided to try to reach our own base. When we reached Glatton, our base near Peterborough we had a problem. We were just barely maintaining flying speed and if Connors lowered the landing gear, that would slow us too much to remain airborne so he brought the plane in with the wheels up until we were over the runway by just a few feet and then he lowered the landing gear and the plane lost speed and just sank onto the runway, a perfect landing. We received a sensational welcome but the most moving part was finding the Red Cross girls there waiting for us with the coffee and donuts. We asked them why they were there so late and they said we were tracked all the way in and they stayed to welcome us in and serve us our coffee! It was quite an emotional moment.

The next day we went out to see our plane. All four engines were removed and would have to be junked and would have to be replaced with new engines, but we had none. It seems that the workers at the aircraft engine plant in Hartford where the engines were made were on some sort of strike. That really frosted us. So we had to fly our next mission in an old B-17E which had no chin turret.