I don't know how they baked anything that big, but it
tasted very good.
One other of our missions somewhere over Germany we lost several more
of our pilots. We ran into a lot of German fighter planes and were
soon scattered all over the sky. I was so busy trying to keep from
being shot down that I didn't get an opportunity to shoot an enemy
plane. When things calmed down I found myself alone so headed back to
England. When I gained enough altitude I heard the relay plane
calling a new compass heading as the wind had changed to about 50 mph
from the north. I corrected to the new heading but there was no way
of knowing if everyone had picked up the message. It was uncanny, the
sense of direction I had. I believe I could have crossed at the
narrowest part of the Channel even without a compass heading! It must
have been a sense of direction I was born with because it made no
difference what my location was over Germany, I knew exactly where
England was all the time.
As it turned out, I was the only one from our squadron of 16 planes
that made it back to our airfield. Most of the others were low an gas
by the time they got over land and were scattered all over England
upon landing. One of our flights of four planes was unaware of the
wind changes, were blown off course and were way south of England.
They were still over land, luckily, when they ran out of gas and had
to bail out. Al Johnson the big Swede was one of them and it was the
only time in the year that he didn't owe me any money! They were
along the coast of France and were captured by the Germans.
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