By Land and By Air

engineer said we had plenty, and that we would have 400 gallons when we got home. As I was multiplying 200 x 11 hours and the total capacity was 2,254 gallons - I kept saying ”you sure we have enough gas?” To make it worse, we had to overshoot a couple of times to let someone in who said they were on the vapour. After the long flight the Pilot was getting mad, and when we landed we parked in the first slot, quite some distance from the hangar. The next morning the ground crew could not start the engines, and found that there was no gas in the tanks, not enough to wet the stick. We were truly flying on the vapour.

Having twice on a single trip to Dresden almost losing my life, it angers me when I think of the reported TV show ”The Good, the Bad and the Evil.”

STETTIN TRIP

After two easy French targets to help the troops in the invasion in Normandy in the Summer of 1944, I was sent on my second longest flight on August 28 and 29, 1944, to Stettin in East Prussia, which lasted over nine hours. Stettin1 was in the Baltic. The flight was to be divided into two targets, one to Stettin and the other to Konigsberg, a few miles from Stettin. Four hundred planes took off for Stettin and 266 for Konigsberg. Of these, 15 were lost in Stettin and 23 on Konigsberg, 38 in all. Our trip took us over the North of Denmark, across the Baltic and over the South of Sweden. According to my Pilot, the flak was only coming up to about 12,000 feet and we were at 20,000 feet. I think some of the history of it going higher, was the imagination of some crews to exaggerate their danger. All the lights were left on in the tower below

1. Szczecin (present spelling)

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