Crew members of Halifax LW282
The Thompson Crew

On the night of the crews arrival at 419 on October 23, Sgt. Thompson was already on his first 2nd. Pilot Sortie. He then completed the second sortie as 2nd. Pilot on the squadron's next operation.
Their first operation on November 18/19 Thompson and his crew found themselves in the very uncomfortable situation of being early over the target. By almost twenty minutes. Luckily they were not the only early arrivals. Strong tail winds, not known to the Met Officer before the squadron had taken off were responsible for throwing the squadron off schedule. The aircraft had to circle the target for the twenty minutes before the Pathfinder aircraft could properly mark the target area.
Sgt. Thompson and his crew also had another problem their Port outer engine failed after a leak in the glycol system. After feathering the engine they now flew into the head winds on the way back to base. Now at least they had their first sortie towards the Tour as they landed at RAF Ford.
A sortie to Berlin went off without a problem then their very next operation they ran short of fuel. They were redirected to Bottesford then with only five minutes fuel left they were diverted to the closer RAF Wymswold. Where they finally were able to land.

December 29th 1943

Halifax LW282 Squadron ID VR-Y took off from Middleton St. George at approximately 1648 on a mission to Berlin on the night of December 29 1943. Somewhere near the target mechanical problems were believed to have caused the outer port engine to loose power and then start a fire on the port wing spreading across to the inner engine and moving towards the fuselage.
Orders were given to bail out. All the crew safely bailed out although during the bail out or on his parachute Sgt. S J Maloney was injured when he landed harder then expected. The crew all were rounded up by the German patrols in the area and became POWs for the rest of the war.
Interestingly Sgt. Thompson and the crewmen had a similar problem, when on a raid on Mannheim the same aircraft developed a glycol leaks shortly after dropping its bomb load. On that occasion Thompson managed to bring the aircraft back to to the RAF base Ford in West Sussex, which was on the South coast of England. Indeed the crew seems to have had a number of incidents where the aircraft let them down, fuel shortages, glycol leaks were more dangerous to this crew then the enemy defences.