What a morning!!!!! For the first time Jerry gave us the works with a vengeance. At about 4:20 with a useful slanting moon casting large shadows the Tobruk Ack Ack disturbed us. “Oh, another raid on Tobruk”, we all thought. No, this time it was us old Jerry was after. After a few bursts the Tobruk guns were silent. The night air was filled with the roaring of aero engines .
For what seemed an interminable time , but was only a matter of a few minutes, the Hun prepared to give us a taste of bombing in the full sense of the word, lower and lower he circled. Then an awful moment when everybody thinks that he personally is the enemy's target. Wheeeee.... whistled the first bomb, errrrumph it exploded near to us .
After dropping his eggs all around us (Jerry came still lower and proceeded to treat us to something which seemed even more demoralising than any bombing can be ground strafing Brrrrrrtt went the Nazis' guns. The explosion of the bombs, bursting of our own Ack Ack shells, the sharp rattling of Jerry's machine guns and the deeper roaring note of our own 3.7 anti aircraft guns produced a most amazing cacophony of sound that has to be experienced to be appreciated.
Till 10 minutes past seven in broad daylight the Hun kept it up... The aircraft could be seen clearly silhouetted against the fleecy white cloud below which they were they were flying . Oh where and Oh where, were our fighters? Some of those German bombers would have been easy meat for a fighter out on an early morning patrol.
Despite the terrifying two hours we had experienced this morning Jerry had inflicted neither casualties nor damage on our squadron. His bombs and machine gun bullets had damaged two Blenheims of 11 squadron and narrowly missed some of their personnel. The enemy used 5 Ju 88's in the first attack against us and three Heinkel lll's in the second. Approximately 15 bombs were dropped mostly 500 pounders with a sprinkling of 250 pounders. One of the enemy aircraft appeared to have been hit by our anti aircraft fire.
Nine of our aircraft today took off on a raid against enemy barges and stores at BEURAT-EL-HSUN. It was another of these long distance efforts which seems to have become the speciality of our Marylands. The raid was abortive, bad weather compelling the planes to return before they reached the target. The bad weather also prevented the five aircraft destined for MALTA from taking off.
Apropos this mornings enemy visitation it later appeared that in the middle of the raid our worthy cypher officer Mr. Newman was handed an immediate signal, which after much difficulty was deciphered. It began “Dust expected.........”