[allynow]

Below is my uncle, Al Gordon's account of the incident in question:

“On my eleventh mission, August 17,1944, we were doing a night patrol over the English Channel, and we got a bogie. So they put us on a heading to intercept, and pretty soon my RO says, "I got him". And we called GCI, and said, "We have him." We closed in, and my RO would tell me, gentle port, gentle starboard, increase your speed, decrease your speed. And he brought me in. It was a German Heinkel 177 bomber.

“Unfortunately he saw me before I saw him, and his tail gunner cut loose knocking out my starboard engine which immediately caught fire. Some of the enemy fire entered the top of my canopy, and lodged in and exploded the hydraulic reservoir just above and behind my head. That knocked out part of the hydraulic system. Fortunately the
P-61 controls didn't operate hydraulically; they were operated by cables. So the hydraulic failure didn't affect the flyability of the plane.

“My first reaction was complete shock—they didn’t tell us about this! Then all the training kicked in and I proceeded to function. I was scared, of course. I'd have to be a liar to say I wasn't. But I was so damn busy, trying to fly the aircraft at that point that I really didn't have much time to think about it. But I knew that I was in trouble, and I was trying to work my way out of it. I could communicate with my RO over the radio, but in hindsight I should have talked more, because he didn't know what the hell I was doing, and he was scared to death.

“So here I am, a flamer, 50 miles out over the English Channel. I feathered the starboard engine right away-- I did the right thing there. And I dove it a little bit to gain speed, and put the fire out. My radio was still somewhat operational, so GCI vectored me back. My guess is that it might have been fifteen minutes before we reached the airfield, but it seemed like a long, long time. I came in on one engine, and I lowered my landing gear, not realizing that my nose wheel had been shot out from under me. Considering everything, it was a good landing, except that when it came time for the nose wheel to drop, there was no nose wheel. So I skidded on the front of the plane to a stop.

“Nobody was hurt, but I learned a valuable lesson on that mission. Never come in for an attack from the rear, shallow—so the tail gunner can see you. Rather you synchronize speed and heading well below the bogie, then identify, drop back, and shoot. The important thing is to live beyond an experience like this and of course learn from it. One tends to be a little more cautious, increasing one’s chances of lasting through the war.”