A Sneeze Spelled Joy.
"'It's all off, kid,' he said. 'Looks like we're through.'
"We dropped from 5,000 meters to 3,000. Then the engine sneezed, coughed and took up again. My heart and the boat came up 2,000 meters in one jump. The rest of the formation had gone on, dropped their bombs on Rombach and were beating it for Ludwigshafen. By the time I got back to my right altitude I could see the effects of their bombs. The railroad station was burning like a haystack and smoke was coming from the munitions plant. I circled the town and the observer released the bombs.
"Then I turned nose back towards Verdun and crossed the lines. A couple of miles behind the line the engine ran out of gas, so we came down in a field."
[They circled several times on the French side of the lines before crossing in order to reach the necessary altitude.] [Kyle dropped eight bombs, most of them on the munition plant at Ludwigshafen.]
"The sky was full of cream puffs," he said, "but it didn't bother us very much because most of the stuff was breaking above or below us. We took our time, aimed for the objective, and dropped the bombs.