Phil Elger/Bill Evans - ME262: The first jet plane

Transcript

Phil: The first time I ever saw a jet plane was in Germany near Berlin and we thought it was a plane with its tail on fire because a big sheet of flame used to come out. Anyhow it was coming straight at us. Bill and the engineer pushed forward and we dived and we were floating. Then they tried to pull it out because we still had a big load on. The navigator, ah, the engineer and the pilot both eventually got it out. We continued on and dropped our bombs. It was terribly windy and we couldn't... and the engineer pulled down the navigator's curtain, they had a black out curtain and he was sitting on that and at last he stood up and said his bum was cold and as he stood up he said 'Hey skipper.' He said 'I'm outside.' 'What do you mean outside?' We'd blown the top off the thing. We were getting the full draught right the way through.

Bill: You lost the canopy did you? Or the ceiling.

Phil: Oh gee it was cold.