Memories of Service 3 - Douglas Smith

Nuremburg, I was on that raid, we lost a hundred aeroplanes that night. A hundred four engine bombers out of eight or nine hundred. Berlin one night, we lost 85. We were losing far too many aeroplanes. That’s why you realise you were bloody lucky to get away with it.

– Douglas Smith

We got chased out of France with a 109 [aircraft] on our tail and every now and again he’d fire a couple of cannon shells. But he had to be pretty careful because we were lower than his ceiling and if he got down to depressing his aircraft to get the guns to fire, he would be going into the ground because we were that low we were going under bloody power lines and all sorts of things.

– Douglas Smith

We were going over Berlin, we were up at 20,000 feet, and all of a sudden I hear my rear gunner say ‘corkscrew! Corkscrew right Doug, there’s a fighter!’ And sure enough I heard his four guns going off. And then he yells out: ‘By crikey, I got him, I got him!’ And he had and this fighter blew up.

– Douglas Smith