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weather. It was during one of these low-level sorties in bad dicing conditions
that
Phil Wintle
and his navigator,
"Dusty" Millier
, found themselves in a large
patch of clear blue sky just as 10
ME109
's were sighted. A dogfight ensued
and lasted about 15 minutes in which the
Mosquito
was hit in several places, but
Phil was able to reach cloud cover and returned to base.
Three tasks, all of a routine nature, formed the backbone of the daylight
work done by the Wing during this period and deserve special mention. Each day
S.H.A.E.F. asked for cover of some of the principal railway lines in Northern
France in order to detect movements of Hun reinforcements; the priority of this
task was always high and, in consequence, when the weather was unsuitable for high-
level conditions it had to be diced. It was undoubtedly a very dangerous form of
operation as the railways had been strongly attacked by the R.A.F. and U.S.A.A.F.
for some months and the Germans had deployed anti-aircraft defences both on the
trains and at the principal towns along the lines. On one stretch of line between
SOMAIN and MONTDIDIER the Wing lost three aircraft and crews in four sorties
though, of these,
Bill Forwell
who lay hidden until August 20th,and
"Butch" Baker
reported safe on Aug 23rd, returned to do duty with the Wing again. The fourth
sortie, flown by
W/O Bradbury
, met intense flak throughout the whole length of
the line and was lucky to return undamaged. Eventually S.H.A.E.F. were persuaded
to ask for cover of only the important stations along the lines unless the whole
could be covered at high-level.
The main Marshalling Yards in Northern France were kept unserviceable
by the bombers and cover of each of them was required at frequent intervals to
watch the Hun efforts to repair them,so that a list of about 25 was supplied by
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