1st November 1944. Operation was to Oberhausen, Ruhr Valley again, it was a "travel centre", lots of roads met at Oberhausen, so did lots of railways, communications centre.

In the words of Frank Dennis:

It wasn't too bad over the target, a bit of flak, which we missed. But we also missed a turning point by a few seconds, probably about 20 seconds, after we had left the target which, I suppose, put us slightly outside the bomber stream. There weren't many aircraft on this operation but we were attacked at about 18,000 feet.
There were two bursts from a night-fighter, one three-quarter rear, which raked us from the rear turret right up to just behind the mid-upper turret, and then came in behind and I thought he must have emptied his magazines. It went on for ages it seemed, a long time, this long, long, long burst. He must have been a bit too close to do complete damage, because you could see the cone of fire from the guns meeting, converging, in front of us.1
But, of course having said that, quite a number of shells hit the inner engines and other parts of the aircraft. First thing that happened was the starboard inner must have caught it, because that burst into flames but the "Graviner" extinguisher did work and put out the fire, I feathered it at the same time. A lot of things happened here. The Skipper seemed to have difficulty in controlling his end, but we had lost the intercom, we'd lost the blind flying panel, most of the other instruments had gone. Ron Cox shouted at me:
I may not be able to hold it, Frank. You had better get your 'chutes on!"
So I told the Bomb Aimer, still down in the nose, we'd only just left the target:
"Get your 'chute on, Tony!" I yelled at him.
Tony, apparently, couldn't see. He was blinded by hydraulic oil. The pipes in the front turret had fractured and there was oil everywhere. Somehow he managed to pull the 'chute in the nose, it probably caught on jagged metal. It billowed out, started burning, like everything else was burning. The Nav’s table was burning, his curtains were burning, everything that was combustible was burning.
We managed to get that out but poor old Tony was very upset, not having a ‘chute now, very upset, so I said:
"We won't jump, Tony, we won't jump"
and I took my parachute off, which seemed to quieten him down a bit.1 But a lot of things happened in a short space of time there.
I thought I had better go back and check on what things were like. Incidentally, the Nav had been hit, he'd passed out. He had been hit in the face, his oxygen mask was sort of buried in his face, but he came round from time to time. Once, when he came round, he asked for a fire extinguisher, which I took from the front of the aircraft, and he sprayed the leading edge of the starboard wing, which was burning. It had burst open and all the cables were burning there. He sprayed that and got himself burned a bit in the process, but he put it out. He brought his hand back inside and flopped down on his table again.
I went back to see what I could find and the Mid Upper wasn't in his turret. He was on the floor with one leg hanging out of a very large hole in the floor where the H2S was. It was just open. The Wireless Operator had been hit badly, only semiconscious. I pulled the Mid Upper back in, unconscious. I didn't know what the matter was with him. I couldn't see any serious injury, didn't seem to have been hit but obviously the detonators had been hit. His turret was just above the detonators to the H2S which you were supposed to detonate to destroy the H2S if you crashed or force landed anywhere in enemy territory to blow it up, highly secret and all that. But they had been hit, which had blown the H2S right off. The explosion had blown him up, apparently, I found out afterwards, had blown him up in to his turret and knocked him out and he had just flopped down.
I went to see if I could see the Rear Gunner, I couldn't see him. He was still in his turret. Well, I thought he was probably in a poor way and can't get out. Well, there's a handle, a dead man’s handle they call it sometimes, which you could rotate the turret with by hand, but it had jammed. I couldn't move it; I had to leave him still in there and have a look at the Wireless Operator, who had been hit in the stomach, hand and arms, bleeding badly.
So I got the Ambulance kit out, which was quite a good Ambulance kit, lots of things, lots of stuff in it, including ampoules of morphine. He must have been in pain and I wanted to give him one but he wouldn't have it. So I cut his clothing off his arms and hands. He was in a bad way, you could see the bones of his hands, his arms were badly injured as well, and he had been hit in the face too. Couldn't see out of one eye. So I patched him up with the Ambulance kit to try and stop the blood flow, which at 18,000 feet, on a cold winter’s night, temperatures in the low -50ºs, wasn't too difficult, it congeals.
Then I dashed back up to see how the Skipper was getting on
As I did that the port inner caught on fire and once again the "Graviner" worked. Surprisingly really that it worked, but it did. So we put the fire out and feathered that one which just left the two outer. So we put those up to maximum cruising: 2650rpm, + 7 inches of supercharger boost.1 Supposed to be for not more than half an hour, but not more.
Then the starboard outer started to act up, missing now and then. Fuel starvation, I suppose, and of course we couldn't hold height, not in a crippled aircraft. Whether the bomb doors were open or the flaps were drooping because of hydraulic failure, I couldn't really tell. Anyway, a lot of things happened.
The Mid Upper had come round and he didn't seem too bad, a bit dazed, and he said he would go and try to get the Rear Gunner out. I talked to him and the Wireless Operator again, who was obviously in pain and I wanted to give him morphine but he wouldn't have it, he said he didn't want it. He wanted to get the dinghy radio set out to get some interference through to let them know we were in trouble. So I left him at that.
"If we have to bale out and I am at the front, I will signal you with the torch just to bale out!"
Of course we had decided to head for Woodbridge after this happened, which wasn't our course at all but it was a long way across the North Sea and bailing out over the North Sea in wintertime you wouldn't stand much chance, a minute chance.
We couldn't hold height and gradually sank down. Jack couldn't get "Toaney"2 out either, but he did get himself out shortly after and he was in a poor way, too.
Hit in the face, hands, feet, couldn't see very well. They stayed in the middle of the fuselage with their 'chutes on. I said:
"If we do have to bale out, if there's no alternative, I will try and signal you with a torch, from the front."
Shortly after that the aircraft dropped into cloud at about 14,000 feet. We had lost 4,000 feet by that time, no instruments, crippled aircraft, we dropped into a spin very quickly. The rotations built up. It was very steep and tight, the G-force was tremendous. I was sitting on the end of the Navigator's bench actually and I couldn't move from there, but I did manage to get my torch out of my tool bag. I thought,
"Well, I don't think we are going to get out of this."
I got ready to signal.
When we broke cloud we were about 5,000 feet, still spinning. I tried to signal but the torch wouldn’t work either so I couldn't.
Whether they could have moved and got out is a matter of conjecture, but you could see the moonlight patches on the sea going round and round and round and getting closer and closer. It looked all up,
"This is it, let’s get it over with quickly."
The Skipper was yelling at me to help pull it out of this but I couldn't move. I passed out then. Obviously, he got it out in the denser air. The controls must have started to work better. When I came to we were going up like a rocket to 4,000 feet or thereabouts.
Obviously we would never make Woodbridge, so we turned back to the Dutch coast. With three badly wounded on board, we might be able to put it down on the seashore or the Dutch polders. That was the plan.
But below 4,000 feet the loss of height was far more gradual, we were still losing height but not at all that rapidly. So we crept along the Dutch coast and somewhere near Zeebrugge they opened up with flak, anti-aircraft fire, all over the place. So we had to shear off out to sea. We had enough trouble as it was without that happening, crept back to the coast again but obviously we would never make it all the way down to where the occupying invading forces were. As we got to the Pas-du-Calais area we could see the searchlight cone over Manston, Manston was an emergency ‘drome as well, like Woodbridge. They still had their emergency cone up, which surprised me. You could see it from our side of the Channel.
The Skipper said:
"Do you think we can make it to over there, Frank?"
I said:
"I don't know how much fuel is left, I'm really not sure, but it's worth a chance, it's worth trying!"
So we thought we'd try, so low level we went across the Channel. We crossed the Kent coast at a few hundred feet.
I had arranged with Tony, the Bomb Aimer, to fire off "reds" as we were going in to Manston. Showed him how to operate the "Very" pistol and where everything was but he couldn't see properly. Fortunately the Wireless Operator was conscious, and he showed Tony what he should do. So Tony was firing "reds" off on the approach.1
What the speed was on the approach, I had no idea. I managed to get the undercart down, with the emergency system, that came down. I don't think we used flaps, if I remember rightly. We had come in at a fair old rate, must have been 150 knots, I would think. The runway was three widths of a normal runway, divided into three. We were signalled to come in on the centre part, so we came in on that one. But as soon as the wheels touched down first the starboard folded, we had come in on the rims actually, both tyres had been hit.
The starboard folded, which swung us round and I was thrown all over the place. Then the port folded and off we went across onto the grass. Still got a terrific speed on, straight through a hedge into a field. Eventually came to rest. Of course the first thing was to get the wounded out in case it started to burn, though there could not have been much fuel. But, we were down at Manston. The emergency services were soon there, fire engines, ambulances, all the rest of it. They were very quick, but they had been warned by the "reds" being fired by Tony. The starboard outer was burning so I yelled at them to put some foam on it, but there wasn’t much point really, there wasn't a lot to burn.
"U-Uncle" was looking in a very sorry state. Perspex missing, full of holes, fabric control surfaces were in tatters, non-existent in some cases. How it all held together in that spin. I don't know how the aircraft stood up to it - enormous strain, but it did. The three seriously wounded were carted off at 3.00 am by Air Ambulance to RAF Halton Hospital and we were given a room, but I don't think we felt like sleeping much, any of us. They had a look at Jack and Tony, the medical people bathed his eyes and that sort of thing and that was it.
I went down the next morning to have a look at the crashed aircraft. I ripped off a piece of elevator fabric, it was green, in tatters. I took this as a souvenir. I found a 20mm shell, which hadn’t exploded, in a pool of oil in the nose, I took that as a souvenir
We had to get the train back to Middleton St George and got a lot of frowns from our fellow passengers on the train, because we carried all our gear. We took it with us, couldn't leave it and it was badly blood stained. They didn't like it at all, but anyway we got back up there.
I was hobbling about for some days after this. Everybody has a crash position except the Pilot and the Flight Engineer. The Pilot, of course, was strapped in, the Flight Engineer was thrown about a bit, but I didn't report it. It seemed so minor after what happened to the others so I left it as it was.
I had some much-needed leave after that and I didn't fly again until December.

We had an intelligence room on the station and aircrew were encouraged to use it. I used to go up there quite often and read all the reports. Because all the conversations between Ground Control and aircraft were recorded and typed up. So you could see what happened on that particular night. On the night we were "clobbered" there was some information given to a night-fighter ‘drome to take off and search for an aircraft flying at about 18,000 feet heading on a certain heading west, due west and investigate what it was. Well it must have been us! It said "Locate and shoot it down". Well at that time we were losing height into cloud. So when he got there we weren't, fortunately, and he didn't locate us. I was tempted to keep that report but I didn't as I thought others would need to read it, and it was definitely an FW-190.