Hazards In Flight

You would hear different airmen talk about the different targets, that one was worse than the other and the one that was the worst which cast fear in the hearts of everybody was the one to Berlin because it was about a 7 ½ hour flight and during which most of that time, you’re exposed to fighters. You’re exposed to the anti aircraft gun. You’re exposed to the search lights. But the one thing that not too many people thought about and it happened a lot was collisions with one another. Because we did all our flying at night, no lights on, if the moon wasn’t shining and if it was cloudy, you had great difficulty seeing who was around you. So the mid upper gunner, the rear gunner, and the pilot and the bomb aimer had to be always on the alert, always looking around him because when you’re in a convoy of four or five or six hundred planes, you’re surrounded by them, top, bottom, so you had to be totally aware of who was around you. And the only thing that kind of saved you was on a moonlit night, the moon would glow on the top of the wings so you could see somebody below you or beside you but you had to be alert and so these were the hazards we had to face.