Flak damage !

[Smithy]

Fascinating! So the excerpt on twitter was correct and the IWM wrong again. I only saw the copied text and not the actual document

Well there you go, right from the horse's mouth

The summary confirms Hungary as target and the records section confirms tracer fire ignited two ammo boxes in the fuselage.

The bit on the IWM caption about rocket-fire made me prick my ears up as rocket-fire, whilst not unheard of, was rarer on night raids than daytime raids.

The extra detail that that poster on Twitter/X has, probably comes from extra documentation such as from a pilot/co-pilot/navigator/etc logbook, reports.

 

[Emchisti]

Yes I believe it was a relative of his on the flight, which is what I remember caught my attention. With the mass exodus from the platform I'm not confident of finding it. You've saved me a lot of scrolling through it though, so thank you for that.

 

[Smithy]

Yes I believe it was a relative of his on the flight, which is what I remember caught my attention. With the mass exodus from the platform I'm not confident of finding it. You've saved me a lot of scrolling through it though, so thank you for that.

Extra detail like that screams of access to more "personal" level documents, either official or unofficial, so logbooks, personal diaries or actual conversations with the fellows involved.

Going back to the original image John posted, it's a stark reminder of how dangerous flying on bomber missions was.

Also, it's a reminder that flying in RAF Bomber Command was THE most dangerous flying job during WWII. If you flew in the USAAF 8th AF over Germany you had a far higher chance of surviving your tour than you would flying night missions with RAF Bomber Command.

Don't believe me here's the stats for someone who flew operationally with RAF Bomber Command...

If you took 100 men who served in Bomber Command as aircrew:

• 55 would be killed on operations or would die as a result of wounds
• 3 would be injured (in varying levels of severity) on operations or active service
• 12 would be taken prisoner of war (some of those wounded)
• 2 would be shot down and evade capture
• and only 27 would survive a tour of operations

They often get forgotten but the bomber boys of the RAF had the roughest job in the air war in WWII.