Took off from Aachen airfield again, in single file as the field is still largely cratered, at about 4 pm, on a two a/c mission to the city of Cologne to bomb the railway bridge. We climbed to around angels 9 and approached the target area to the north. Flt Lt Merfort took us around to starboard so we approached the target from the east side. Because of heavy cloud cover over the target some of the city's bridges were not clearly visible and Flt Lt Merfort chose a different bridge to the one we were assigned in the ops briefing. We ended up diving onto one of the road bridges but the angle of attack was also somewhat unusual and this required a considerable bank to port in order to line up for the bomb drop. I rode it down to well below 2000 ft before lifting the nose and dropping all three. On pulling out I throttled up to 'buster' and stayed at just above roof and treetop height. I could see Flt Lt Merfort above and in front of me and we continued to egress away to the west. In my mirror I saw two explosions, the first around 50 feet to the side of the bridge and the second explosion was right on top of the bridge. This bridge was destroyed certainly on account of the amount of debris thrown up into the air from the explosion.
We headed west almost into the sun towards the base airfield at Aachen. Skipper ordered an overhead break and after I had broken to port he called out to abort as flak was seeen above. We climbed through the gate to reach the flight of intruders that quickly became visible. 'B' Flight was also around the area and at around 5000 ft I saw a long nosed FW-190 Dora attacking a Spit who started to smoke. I pulled swiftly underneath this enemy a/c and obtained a positive ID of type before pulling into his six and giving him 3 half second bursts of cannon and ball round. I saw pieces of this a/c come away and his engine was smoking black and white, leaking both oil and coolant. After the final burst the enemy a/c put his nose down and was seen to plummet vertically down. I followed him through the clouds but lost track of him after that. By the way that this a/c was smoking and diving I claim it as probably destroyed.
Flt Lt Merfort shot down four enemy a/c of this same type and I can confirm that I witnessed one of these as a blazing torch falling to ground and exploding. When all the enemy a/c were accounted for we recovered back to Aachen. Big party in the mess for Skipper. F/Lt 'Madov' Emblin |
