A Story of War

45 sqn Blenheims and 17 sqn Hurricanes as escort go off at dawn to bomb Mingaladon. The PRU brought home some pictures showing aircraft all over the runways. They get attacked before their run up and all the way back to Henzada. 45 sqn shoot down a few, drop their bombs and 17 sqn get a few more. I arrange to do an R/T test with 17th Division today and am trying to tune my radio with the ground station, on the satellite, when I suddenly see 18 strange aircraft in straggle formation. I head for the bushes, with the fear in my heart, as they appear to be coming down to ground strafe us. Then the sky fills with planes and a stick falls along the E/W strip of the satellite and also apparently in the town where a petrol dump goes up.

We run further out into the bush and more and more formations appear. There is some high cloud, so they can be seen quite clearly against it. They knock hell out of the aerodrome, but don’t appear to notice the satellite and Navy ‘0’s swoop down in the smoke and machine gun it. Dog fights all over the sky and a Hurricane comes in low over our heads, quite slowly. Off they go and we return to the dispersal. I then hear an ominous noise so out we go again, to see 18 bombers heading south. More bombs fall and then about 17 come in at 10000′ from the east with the ack-ack going through them, but bursting high. A DC2 looms through the smoke and goes away again, to come back afterwards and land on the satellite. I return to my R/T and get it working by 4.30, so instead of beating the sun I decide to do it tomorrow. Perhaps I will get a rocket, but I don’t fancy flying after all that. But they may catch me tomorrow.