Danny:
The engine incident was the only one that caused Dad,s crew to abort an op; he never mentioned any other problems with their ac, other than that a lot of the older ac assigned to new crews just didn,t seem to want to climb. I am sure that they had many patches on them from battle damage; in addition to the flak and fighters, once they had a 500 pound bomb go right through the wingtip, dropped from an unseen ac above them. Luckily, it neither exploded, nor hit anything vital.
To give perspective of what they had to fly through, I was watching pictures on the TV with Dad when the first Gulf war began. CNN had crews all over Baghdad, and the pictures of the flak there was awe inspiring. Dad quietly said that was pretty much how it was for about 90 minutes leading up to Berlin; over Berlin itself it increased about 4 fold for about 20 minutes he estimated. The Germans used radar predicted flak to great advantage as on the lead up to the bombing run ( and the subsequent 30 seconds after the bombs were dropped in order to get the much hated bombing photo) the aircraft was obliged to fly at a constant speed, altitude and heading. No evasive maneuvers were permitted until the camera had taken the bombing photo, after which the crews could do what they felt best in the circumstances. Then there was the trip back home, also fraught with more flak and searchlights. It is a wonder how they went back out night after night; and how the ground crews were able to patch the airframes and return them to operational status, often at night and out in the open