Description
Mr. Kondra describes one risk of flying, a near head-on collision with a German Messerschmidt 109. He describes the German pilot's skill in avoiding the fire of his crew's mid-upper gunner.
William Kondra
On January 14, 1922, William Kondra was born in Prudhomme, Saskatchewan. He finished Grade 8 at his local school, and, with difficulty, finished high school through correspondence. He was working on local farms for a pittance, so he decided to enlist in the Air Force, where he trained as a bomb aimer/front gunner. Mr. Kondra's tour of duty was completed with his original crew members aboard a Lancaster Bomber, and primarily consisted of air strikes on industrial Germany. Mr. Kondra offers many insights into the technology, strategy and stresses of flying in a bomber.
Transcript
We were doing night bombing and danger of attack from head on wasn’t that great but a Messerschmidt just about collided with us over the target and he saw us at the last second and he pulled up but a few more seconds and he would have collided with us but he pulled up and he knew that there was a mid upper gunner in our position so I hollered to the mid upper that there was an enemy fighter above but he also knew that he had to get away from there so he just did a roll and disappeared before our gunner could spot him but it was unusual for a fighter to come head on like he did at us and he many not have seen us well it was a good thing he saw us at the last second because he would have collided with us.