The Valour and the Horror

MOFFAT:

We were hit by a fighter and the tailgunner and the wireless op were killed. The flight engineer, he was wounded bad, and our bomb load was hit. These bombs were made with phosphorous.

It starts pouring out all over and it catches fire. Well this is like a big blow-torch. So the skipper he puts it into a steep dive and he puts it out, and we head home, but we can't open the bomb door to jettison the bombs out, and, we can't get our wheels down. So as we're coming into the base they say: "OK guys, head it out to sea, everybody bail out." Well the skip says, "We can't do that, we've got wounded on board. I mean, you know, if he bails out and nobody finds him, he's gonna bleed to death." So they say, "Ok, give us a half hour and we'll put everybody in the air raid shelters." So we're flying around, for, you know, God knows how long, and the siren's goin' and we're flying around and this whole time, the flight engineer, he's passed out.

Well he comes to and he says, `Hey, what's goin' on? And we tell him, you know, we're going in for a belly landing. And he says, "What, the wheels won't come down?" And we say, "No, you know, we can't get the hydraulics to work." And he says, "It doesn't matter, all you gotta do is cut the hydraulic pipe and they'll come down on their own." So we drag him over to it, but he passes out when he gets there. He comes to, he passes out, he comes to... Finally he tells us which one to cut.

So we cut it, the wheels come down, the green lights come on, we land.

The second we stop - Poof! - the whole things goes up in flames again. Well they douse us with the foam and they put it out.

I guess nobody's ever come back with wounded in a really badly shot up plane before, because ah, well normally, when the plane gets hit, everybody bails out and the plane crashes. Well they said it was too demoralizing. So they put the plane in the hangar and they wouldn't let anyone see it.

After every mission the crew - those who survived - were debriefed: