Jack Colpus wrote his own account of the raid; ‘Arrived at the target on time at about 20.000 feet with no cloud cover-contrary to met forecast. The whole Berlin area was a mass of waving searchlights about 40 miles in diameter. We completed our bombing run and had just selected bomb doors closed when we were coned by searchlights. They seemed to come from all directions at once. Evasive action corkscrew turns which were made in attempt to escape, failed. Heavy flak thumped in all around us, with puffs of black smoke and cordite smell, indicating how close they were. After a while, which seemed like eternity, the flak stopped as if by magic, which meant only one thing. Fighters were coming in.
I decided on desperate action and dived steeply down to the left and picked up speed to reach 300 mph at 10,000 feet before pulling out to the right and up. At that moment the searchlights lost us, although I was still dazzled. We were climbing as quickly as possible
to gain height to get away from the light flak and back into the main bomber stream when suddenly the plane lurched and dived to port. I thought we had lost power on one engine, but the rear gunner said we had hit another Lancaster. Full right rudder, full rudder bias and full aileron trim was applied, but Sugar still kept turning to the left. Further action was necessary, so power on the engines on the port side was increased and on the starboard side decreased until we were able to fly on course. All four motors were then switched to run off the port wing fuel tanks in an effort to eventually raise the port wing to a near level position. We jettisoned the bomb containers to
lighten the load. The plane was now under control flying at the slow speed of 140 mph and gradually losing height. We decided to fly home straight to base at 140 mph -we would soon be out of the bomber stream which was taking a dog-leg route back.
After about two hours, due to a lighter fuel load, we were able to maintain height at about 5000 feet. The crew made ready to bail out if necessary, as the amount of damage sustained could not be ascertained, and now that evasive action would not be possible, we would be sitting ducks for flak or fighters. Full right rudder was required for the 4-hour trip back. The engineer went into the bomb aimer’s compartment and assisted me by holding the rudder pedal with a strap around it, to give my leg a rest.
When nearing the coast of England we were directed to land at Linton-on-Ouse as Waddington was covered in fog At Linton-on-Ouse we were given priority landing behind a plane which was overshooting. At this time we were about 500 ft too high on the approach,
but I decided to land as time was getting short. As we touched down on the runway at 120 mph (about 20 mph too fast due to the steeper angle of descent) the port wing stalled. If I had made a normal approach at the correct speed, the plane would have stalled before landing and crashed. The aircraft ground looped at the far end of the runway due to the high landing speed and excessive breaking.
Inspection of the damage revealed that about 5 feet of the wing tip was missing and a portion of the remaining damaged area which was turned down at right angles, caused the turning problem. S-Sugar was classified category Q and sent back to the manufacturers. The
other Lancaster, from No 61 Squadron, was coned in searchlights and was taking avoiding action when we collided. The skipper confirmed this, when he landed at Waddington a few days later especially to see me to discuss circumstances. We were very lucky.’
