In a Land Far Away, in a Time best forgotten, young Bob suffered from a malady common to those who are not in touch with their own Mortality. This is commonly found amongst the young of the Male of the Species especially after putting on an Olive Green Tee-Shirt said to be bullet proof.
The first time was simple. Weather deteriorated in the middle of a 105mm Howitzer Battery Move. As there was a limited choice of routings between two points in a valley capped by cloud, we allowed ourselves to become predictable.
The Locals, objecting to all the noise and flyovers pointed a 7.62 Machine Gun skywards and fired off a long belt of ammo. With my cooperation, routing directly overhead their location they scored well for the Home Team.
I parked at a safe place which happened to be nearly under the Nose not at all far from the hostile locals. We got the Bird into a flyable state and went home to swap horses.
In my unit, when it was your day to fly, you flew.
Upon swapping horses we went oop north to a new place and went back to work. I did all my assigned tasks and being a good neighbor offered to help out the competition.
This time Fate, Luck, Statistics, and pure damn propinquity and a proper AAA gun crew conspired to divert me from my appointed rounds.
A .51 Cal entered cockpit and exited stage right taking one of the Pedals out from under my Foot. That theft and the resulting damage caused a rather nice fire as the Hydraulic Fluid burned off while being fanned by the inflowing air from where the Chin Bubble had once been. As I have remarked in the past, even .51 Caliber bullets making their way through your environs holds small candle to other things that crop up in their wake.
We are not talking "Smoke in the Cockpit" here.
In the end, as we were unable to locate a suitable landing spot due to being in cloud over a mountainous jungled area, we endured the fire until it burnt itself out when the Hydraulic fluid emptied itself and other damage and made a GCA back to our takeoff point.
It was the best GCA I ever flew.
Bob was in full embrace of his own Mortality at the end of the Day.
One question lingers, why can I not be as lucky when it comes to the Lottery?