Newspaper cutting - Lancaster riddled won home

Newspaper cutting - Lancaster riddled won home

Relates story of Lancaster on operation to Berlin being hit by night fighter fire which wounded crew and damaged aircraft. Returning home with wounded crew and belly landed.

One newspaper cutting

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NBakerP161128-01

LANCASTER RIDDLED, WON HOME

Landed on Open Bomb-doors

By Daily Mail Reporter

WITH one of her crew dead and most of the others wounded, "Y for Yoke" Lancaster bomber, riddled with bullets and damaged by fire, struggled home from the raid on Berlin on January 31.

Then the undercarriage could not be lowered, but the bomber landed on her still-open bomb-doors.

Over Berlin "Y for Yoke" was making a bombing run when a German fighter opened fire from close range. The first burst killed the wireless operator and wounded both gunners.

The pilot, Flying Officer W. Breckenridge, a native of Glasgow, put the bomber into a dive, and then resumed his bombing run.

[missing word] bombs had just been dropped when the enemy fighter attacked again and the navigator, Warrant-Officer J. Meek, of Vancouver, was badly wounded.

Two More Attacks.

The pilot again shook off [missing word] fighter, but two minutes lat[missing letters and word] enemy machine came in [missing word] This time bullets crashed into [missing word] cockpit, grazing the pilot's legs.

Then a fourth attack was ma[missing letters] and the bomber was again riddled with bullets, but the pilot succeeded in shaking off the enemy machine for good.

Turning for home the crew found that the oxygen and hydraulic systems, the engine-room panel, the elevator and rudders, the rudder trimmers, and the "inter-comm" had been damaged. The petrol tank was holed and the bomb-doors would not close.

The wounded rear-gunner, Sergeant J. Schwartz, of Windsor, Ontario, recovering consciousness, struggled out of his turret but collapsed.

Pilot-Officer W.V. Baker, of New Malden, Surrey, the mid-upper-gunner, although badly shaken by a shellburst took Sergeant Schwartz's place and the bomb-aimer went up into the astrodome.

Hit, Carried On

Warrant-Officer Meek had a nasty bullet wound in his left shoulder, but he refused to leave his job and he mapped out a course for the pilot.

Over the North Sea the ele[missing letters] system caught fire, but Pilot-Officer Baker and the flight-engineer Sergeant A.F. Stevenson, of [indecipherable word] Banffshire, put out the flames.

The crippled "Y" for Yoke" made the nearest airfield and [missing words]