W/Cdr. Basil Embry, 23 May 1940.

[SteveR]

I have the White Lion edition from 1976. A couple of things of interest from Chapter 10: France, 1940.

p. 149: "...and from the 20th to the 26th the squadron carried out two operations each day." He then goes on to describe what happened to him on the 22nd, which I'll get to in a minute.

pp. 150-1, after describing the 22nd, "The night before I had slept in my clothes on the floor of a store building at Manston because on returning from a late evening mission we had been told there was low mist covering Wattisham... " He then states that at first light he flew back to Wattisham, refuelled and rearmed, and set off at once on the "ill-fated flight" (meaning that of the 22nd).

As to the 22nd, he covers it on pp. 149-150. It's a bit long to type out here, so the short version is that the formation ran into bad weather with low clouds, the formation broke up, and Embry went on to the target alone. There he received a direct flak hit in the port wing, "...and the hole in it was as big as a grand piano." He describes the difficulty flying the almost uncontrollable aircraft, which was losing height, and so he landed at the nearest airfield, Hawkinge.

Unfortunately, he doesn't give the aircraft's serial; also, it seems he flew only the one mission on the 22nd.

So Manston on the night of the 21st, back to Wattisham on the morning of the 22nd, flew a mission that day in which he was hit by flak in the port wing, landed at Hawkinge.