December 1944: An “Alouette” Christmas story

December 23, 2019 - Defence Stories

It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 1944. Flight Sergeant Jean Cauchy was the pilot of a Halifax bomber making a bombing run on Dusseldorf Airfield in Germany.

Hit by flak, the Halifax lost one of its engines. To make matters worse, there was still a bomb in the bomb bay that hadn’t released during the attack. Despite wanting to get to their home base for Christmas, and the Christmas concert in which he and many of his crew were scheduled to sing, he diverted the crippled, dangerously loaded aircraft to a new location, all while still being targeted by flak.

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