The other planes would pop up out of the
clouds. It was quite a sight.
One time we had a Lieutenant Colonel leading our squadron and when he
got up on the runway the pilot who was taking off with him either
misjudged or didn't use his brakes and he ran into the back of the
Colonels plane, chewing off the entire tail section. The pilot
probably wished he could have died right there, but nobody was hurt.
Another time a boy by the name of Snyder came back from a mission
with a damaged plane and he ran off the end of the runway and
crashed. The emergency trucks went out and covered the plane with
foam to prevent a fire and he got out okay. He was not injured but
during the next few weeks his hair turned completely white. I
wouldn't have believed that could happen if I hadn't seen it myself.
The weather at this time of year was not very good in England, with
fog and a lot of cloudy days. If the weather was good over the target
we would usually fly anyway. Coming back from missions we were
usually at about 15OOO feet and when we got to where we thought the
field was, we would dive down and pull out just above the ground. We
could get up to 550 mph in those dives and the the wings would start
to vibrate and the plane would shake, but that didn't stop us from
doing it. At times we would come down through a thick overcast sky
and wouldn't see the ground until we came out from beneath the
clouds.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124