assigned to the ball gun turret, helped save the lives of six of his wounded comrades and put out a blazing fire after his aircraft was hit, and drove off wave after wave of German fighters. The target of the mission was the U-boat pens at Saint-Nazaire in Loire-Atlantique, France, on the Bay of Biscay. Saint Nazaire was heavily defended by antiaircraft guns and was nicknamed "flak city" by the airmen. Several of the bombers failed to rendezvous as intended, and others had mechanical problems and had to turn back. The middle portion of the bombing mission went well, with no German fighters engaging the mission until after they had released their bomb loads on target. As the fighters came up, the bombing group managed to elude them by flying into a large cloud bank. Due to a navigational error, after being in the cloud bank, the navigator in the lead plane believed he was approaching the southern coast of Britain. In fact, the aircraft were approaching the heavily fortified French city of Brest and the southern coast of the Breton Peninsula. The pilot began to descend to and was almost immediately set upon by several German fighters and intense anti-aircraft fire. Staff Sergeant Smith's bomber was hit, rupturing the fuel tanks and igniting a massive fire in the center of the fuselage. The damage was severe, knocking out communications and compromising the fuselage's integrity. Smith's ball turret lost power, and he scrambled out to assist the other crew members. Three crew members bailed out, while Smith tended to two others who were seriously wounded. In between helping his wounded comrades, Smith also manned the .50 caliber machine guns and fought the raging fire. The heat from the fire was so intense that it began to melt the metal in the fuselage, threatening to break the plane in half. For nearly 90 minutes, Smith alternated between shooting at attacking fighters, tending to the wounded and fighting the fire. To starve the fire of fuel, he threw burning debris and exploding ammunition through the large holes that the fire had melted in the fuselage. After the fire extinguishers were exhausted, Smith finally managed to put the fire out, in part by urinating on it. Smith's bomber reached England and landed at the first available airfield, where it broke in half as it touched down. It had been hit with more than