Description

From the diary of Lt. David W LeBlanc: " This afternoon we went to Nancy France and it turned out to be a bad day. We had #3 off the group leader. It wasn't very deep in France when #3 engine started running terribly rough so we feathered it. While determining our trouble we fell back considerably and Knight moved up and took our place. Shortly after he did that we were hit by extremely accurate flak. The very last bursts knocked Copley and Knight down. They both had fires in the right wings. Three or four chutes were seen leaving Cope's ship - none from Knight's ship. Both planes blew up in the air. Nick, our navigator was riding with Cope. It was his next to last trip - he asked to go. Hayward was with Cope and he was on his last mission. We were unable to keep up so dropped our bombs. Came back across France alone and at 12,000 feet. #4 Engine busted a cylinder and we feathered it and restarted #3. Our electrical system went out because of a fire in #2. Result was that we had no radio, turrets, turbos, hydraulics. P47s picked us up half-way back and remained with us all the way. Thank God for them. We landed at the coast as our gas was very low."