By Lzmd and By Air

marked by the markers with the red in the centre, the blue ranging and the last to bomb was the yellow markers.

I had not started flying before D-Day but I recall sitting on the grass hearing the guns on D-Day as over 10,000 planes took part in the fight and many of them shuffled back and forth while we waited as back up, to go over with the gas bombs. It was well that no gas bombs were dropped during the war. The first raids were in France, to help out our troops, mostly on railway yards. Our fourth trip was on a Sunday on Bergen, Norway, to try to hit naval ships - that is one of the other pictures I have and one can see that a few bombs went into the water.

I remember the Bomb Aimer saying, ”Ken, move over a bit; I can see a baby carriage below." He usually kept up a patter when he was bombing, which seemed to lighten up the tension as the flak flew around us. It was one of our easy trips as we flew over the top of Scotland.

The next flight, our seventh, was on Dortmund, the first of our 20 trips to the Ruhr (Happy Valley) where the heaviest flak in Germany was - this was not only the first, but one of the worst, to the Ruhr. According to my log book, which has very few comments, I note we were coned (with search lights) for nine minutes, hit by flak and later on the way home, attacked by a Junker 88 German fighter and had to land at Warboys, England. The next was to the Ruhr and we had a fighter attack.

On the 14th we bombed Duisburg and went back that night and bombed again. The next night we bombed Wilhemshaven naval yards which were heavily guarded and were diverted to Tempsford and returned to base three days later - one of my busiest weeks, with not much time to rest.

Back again on the 28th and 30th to Koln, Ruhr, with lots of flak but no fighter attacks. In November we

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