The morning hours passed with our squadrons sitting anxiously, waiting to be called up. 2 attacks were flown against convoy Whiskey, both were driven back with heavy casualties. It was not until noon that we were called to bomb the Midget convoy, off the eastern coast of England.
The weather was not bad, but littered with low-flying clouds, a nightmare for dive bombers. We got to our planes and started them up, heading north.
We were just passing the mouth of the channel when we flew by another flight of Stukas, returning from the attack on the Whiskey convoy. Unfortunately, these were followed by a flight of Englander fighters, Hurricanes, themselves followed by the escorting Bf 109s of the other flight.
The Hurricanes jumped on our squadron, I saw several Stukas starting to smoke, though I do not know how many went down. A Hurricane headed straight for me, I banked hard and it overshot, but soon 2 more of it's friends decided to attack me. I struggled to avoid their fire, and strafed them as they passed, though scoring no hits.
After a while the Hurricanes were engaged by the passing Bf 109s, leaving our squadron to continue to it's objective.
We got to our objective, unfortunately it was obstructed by a heavy layer of clouds. I flew to the point where I thought was best and dived through the clouds.
Turns out I was nowhere near the convoy, I pulled up to perform a glide bombing attack on one of the nearset merchants.
Moments after I dropped my bomb, a huge explosion engulfed the ship. I don't know whether that was my bomb or one of the other aircraft's, but the ship was smoking heavily and capsizing fast.
We started the long flight back to base. One of our planes was struck by fire from the ships, but otherwise the flight was uneventful.
I came in to land, but unfortunately, I pulled down my flaps too early and they became stuck. It took me 3 runs, but eventually I managed to get the plane down without any further damage.
We hit 3 ships during that sortie, another 2 attacks were mounted against Whiskey and Midget, and damaged them more successfully.
We lost 36 aircraft that day.