I was Yellow Two in a ground attack mission on the airbase at Köln-Wahn. The attack was conducted at night with snow falling and low cloud cover. Conditions made it difficult to navigate and keep formation. The formation was split over Köln and Red flight made it to the target first. I followed Yellow One in over the airfield and dropped bombs at what appeared to be a fixed AAA emplacement with aircraft behind. Yellow One’s bombs exploded as I was over target and I may have taken shrapnel but the aircraft felt fine on the flight home. We immediately egressed home and reconnected with Red One. On the flight home we had two separate encounters with enemy aircraft we believed to be enemy 262s. It may have been two flights of 2 or the same flight encounters twice. The second encounter was head on and almost resulted in collision. On route home we had difficulty finding our home airbase due to the conditions but eventually located the airfield thanks to Red Two circling overhead. Red One had to ditch over friendly territory due to damage from flak during the attack. P/O 'Bird' Irwin | 
