We flew mission No. 4 today. We got up at 4:00 a.m. this morning. We were to bomb a railroad bridge across the Rhine river. It was close to the town of “Angers”. I don’t know whether we hit the bridge or not. It was 1300 feet long and 320 feet wide. There was a break in the clouds over the target but I still think we missed. We were supposed to fly ship No. 211, but when we started to take off we ran clear off the runway. We fired a couple of red flares and went back to the parking strip. We looked the plane over and everything seemed o.k., so we tried it again. We went off the runway again. They took us over to the spare ship. Lt Rebeun had just grounded it but they gave it to us. It was ‘943” Cherub, the same ship we flew on our first mission. In No 211 we had 2x500 lb. Bombs and 10 Propaganda bombs We carried 4x2000 lb. Bombs in No. 943. No. 1 and 4 were torching after take off and our right landing gear wouldn’t stay up. The prop on #4 threw oil and smoked all the way to target. We pulled 2500 RPM and 45 inches, but we still couldn’t keep up with the formation. We ran into some moderate flak over the target. On the way back we had to feather No. 4, and fly back alone. We had a little trouble finding the field, but we made is o.k. It was the sweetest two-engine landing I ever saw. After we parked the found a large flak hole in No. 4 engine, so now we’ve had our 1st engine shot out. We flew five hours and fifty minutes.