The day began in normal fashion. At (820 hrs. the customary armed weather recce (four pilots F/Os Laurence, Fraser, Anderson and Angelini) took off to see what conditions were like over the American battle front to the south. The other pilots gathered in the crew room to await their return.

Presently, about 0915, some sporadic gunfire was heard, causing everyone to dash for the door to see what was happening.

Eindhoven after Operation Bodenplatte

Photo source unknown

Eindhoven after Operation Bodenplatte. Only three of 439's aircraft were caught in the air attack; one was destroyed and  one damaged, and one was shot down. 

Photo courtesy of George Mandia

 The sight which met their eyes was amazing, incredible! First a Focke Wulf streaked across the airfield and then, before anyone could reach the weapons for which they had instinctively turned, "all hell seemed to break loose". In over the treetops that rimmed the field came dozens of aircraft (about 75 in all) bearing not the familiar
red, white and blue circles but the black crosses and swastikas of the Luftwaffe. 

For the next twenty minutes the Focke Wulfs and
Messerschmitts carried out "one of the finest strafing jobs one would want to see." The enemy pilots "systematically climbed, dived, fired their guns and even took time off to wave to some of the boys." Before long the whole airfield was covered by heavy clouds of billowing smoke; explosions went off in every direction and fires were seen wherever one looked. 

While this was happening the law of self preservation prevailed on the ground as everyone made a mad scramble for the nearest cover. Some of the pilots and airmen flung themselves into a trench behind the crew room where the water was three feet deep with a two inch layer of ice on top. More stragglers made "low level dives" into the trench until their weight broke through the ice and submerged the bottom layer of huddling forms. 

When the attack began S/L Crosby and F/L Carr were nonchalantly "jeeping" down from the mess. By the Sally Ann hut their progress was abruptly terminated and for the next twenty minutes they crouched in a ditch until they could move to safer quarters in a culvert. F/Os Johnny Johnson and Jack Roberts were on their way over to maintenance in a truck driven by LAC Len Weir when they heard the cannon fire and noticed the "somewhat out of place" iron crosses. Bailing out of the vehicle in record time, they scurried behind it for cover. Johnny felt fairly secure behind one of the wheels until a bullet punctured the tire! In retrospect some of the incidents had their humorous aspect,
as the case of the airman who vacated one of the newly erected toilets a few bare seconds before it was hit by an explosive shell.

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