"Very soon the smoke cleared a little, and to my amazement I saw that rot only were the engines still there but that they were both running. Then the bomb-aimer came up through the well, his face streaming with what looked like blood.
"He was holding his head and could not stand upright. I could not possibi ly help him since it was all I could do to regain control of the aircraít.
"Suddenly he shouted 'Fire!' and staggered along towards the t: There were flames coming through ihe door beneath the petrol tank, I shouted to the crew to put them out. Nobody heard me. They were all there before I shouted.
"A little later I looked round and saw the wireless operator coming through the door with flames licking his flying suit. He was on fire himself.
"The bomb-aimer beat the flames out with his hands. Then he disappeared down the fuselage again. He seemed to have recovered completely, and it turned out that what I had taken to be blood was only oil.
"Back in the body of the machifié the crew were working frantically to get rid of the incendiaries and anything that might explode, We carried on in this state and dropped our bombs, We had not made the journey for fun, and the job had to be done as best we could do it.
"The second pilot came forward and reported that the fire seemed to be under control The wireless operator had pushed the blazing flare down the chute and the bomb-aimer was stamping the flames out.
"The second pilot left the bomb-aimer to deal with the fire, and went back to the tail gunner, who had been knocked out by the explosion. He had come to, thinking that the turret had been' blown completely off and that it was falling through the sky.
"The next thing he remembers is helping to throw out the incendiary bombs and being told by the second pilot to go back for his parachute in case the other end of the aeroplane should fall off.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.