'We'd been briefed to attack an aircraft works at Hamburg. We bombed from about 9,000 feet, and were on our way back when some flak hit the rear turret. The rear gunner was trying to extinguish the fire, but couldn't put it out. The flames became obvious from the ground and we were caught in a cone of searchlights. About 20 lights homed in on us and it was like daylight. Though we got the turret fire out, a night-fighter had come in and lined itself up. He polished us off and some of the bullets he fired set off the flares inside the aircraft and set the aircraft on fire. I'd been hit several times, as had my navigator, and we were both lying on the floor of the aircraft.
'We were lucky. The fire had put out the hydraulics on the rear turret and when the order was given to abandon the aircraft by the captain the rear gunner was not able to go out sideways as you would normally do, but crawled back inside the aircraft to get out of the hatch. He saw me lying on the aircraft floor and picked me up, sat me on the edge of the hatch, put my parachute on, put my hand on the rip-cord, said "For God's sake pull it!", and chucked me out.
'I came to conciousness enough to pull the cord. We came down by parachute and I was taken to the nearest POW hospital, which was staffed entirely by French prisoners. No one could speak English, but there was a professor of Surgery there from Strasbourg University, one of the few surgeons in Europe who was skilled enough to save my life.
'The navigator was left inside the aircraft. He came to, looked around, saw that there was no one else there, got up to clip on his parachute, had a dizzy spell and dropped it through the escape hatch. He was in an aircraft that was on fire with no parachute. He walked up to the front, saw that there was no pilot there either, and go into the pilot's seat. He decided to end it quickly and dive straight into the ground, but then he had second thoughts and ended up bringing the aircraft down and landing it in a field in Germany about 1 o'clock in the morning, pitch black, with great skill. He ended up in the same hospital as I did a month later. He was badly wounded.'
-- Alex Kerr, Bomber Command pilot
taken from
Bomber Command, Reaping the Whirlwind
