[hooter]

Hi all,
well Tom (Tommy-100570), my father, was credited with one destroyed and one damaged on the night of the 16th of January. It was flying RS507
There was a further 109 up the runway which spun in and blew up of its own accord, the pilot panicking my father said. The german pilots did visit my father in the airfield sickbay, and did tell him that his efforts had scratched three 109's from their strength, all of them were write offs. At this point they did not expect him to live-there was already a grave prepared for him next to his navigator.
And yes it was typical that he was credited with one destroyed, one damaged at the Squadron.
Not tonight but this week i will see if i can scan his little tally sheet showing what he did do-it was just a faint pencil written list on a scrap of paper tucked in his log book-and i will post a scan of the last page of his log book.
A lot of the low level chaps did a full tour with very little to show for it-but as they were reminded by B R O B Hoare (Sammy) it was the psychological effect it had on the enemy, not just the kill rate 1 on 1.
Additionally by january, alot of the airfields had been beefed up with additional flak so rhubarbing an airfield was a different proposition than a year earlier.
to put this into perspective I did hear that while the squadron was 'up' in Italy a year earlier, one night, no one saw a single german plane-it was learned later that 22 axis-german planes crashed because they kept on getting diverted and refused clearance due to the squadrons presence. (Possibly from the Y service)
However sadly i cannot remember where i read this.