"The airplanes going straight in were getting hit. The Hughes airplane (J), third directly ahead of us was on fire but kept going and dropped its bombs into the target. Horton's airplane (C-) directly ahead was getting hit after he released his bombs as he made a slight correction to the right to avoid smoke and flames. Bill Nading and I looked at each other and I concurred by a hand gesture with him to go through the smoke and flames. We were flying at an altitude about half way up the height of the chimney of the power plant, the target of the lead airplanes in each element. Our bombardier released the bombs and we zipped through the smoke and flames. We could see the flash from the barrels of guns shooting at us from pointblank range, but Blonds Away continued to fly normally. I assumed we were getting hit but could not detect any damage. Our tail gunner, Joe Fussi, reported that the tail turret had failed and he was trying to repair it. (Later examination showed this to be an equipment failure unrelated to the combat.) We crossed the village of Campina flying just above the roofs of the houses. We could see Mooney's airplane (R-) wobbling along and we were trying to move into a tight formation with it. We caught up with Horton's airplane (C-) which appeared to be in bad shape with a major fire in the fuselage. Just as we were even with it, perhaps fifty feet higher and one hundred feet to the left, the airplane hit the vertical bank of a stream bed just beyond the village. The airplane crumpled into a fireball. It did not appear that anyone could survive this crash, but a few months later we learned the top turret gunner survived. We could see to the left the Hughes' airplane (J) sliding to a stop after cart wheeling into a stream bed. Some claimed they could see a crew member climbing out of the wreckage. We learned later that two crew members survived the crash but one soon died."