You can imagine what this did to
our morale. We gave up thoughts of going home and Just concentrated
on surviving as many missions as we could.
We were about to get some new planes with the bubble canopy and were
looking forward to that as they made it easier to see all around you
without all the metal braces in the canopy. One day I was told my
plane was coming that day and was looking forward to checking it out.
We would take it up high over England to check the performance at
high altitude, the guns and controls... just to get the feel of it.
In the afternoon we had to escort some A-20 bombers to France on a
bombing run and when I got back my new plane was gone. One of our new
replacement pilots had been sent up to check it out and at 30,000
feet he said something felt wrong and he bailed out. My new plane
crashed somewhere in England and I never even got to see it! He was
just a young kid and I never did believe that anything was really
wrong with the plane. I was angry with him for a long time as I never
did get one of the new planes and flew all the remaining missions
with the old one.
Another time when our flight was returning on instruments as the
overcast was so thick, we came down to 1000 feet and broke out to
find ourselves over London with the barrage balloons all around us.
They were balloons that had a steel cable hanging down from them to
prevent enemy planes from flying low over the city.
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