Below is an account of the flight and subsequent crashlanding by Lieutenant Blackler written in December 1945.

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"After missing the coast of France at night because of a radio failure and my new co-pilot who is not much of a navigator. I cannot put the blame on him I should have been checking him as we went along. When I saw that we were over land I dropped down very low to see if I could pinpoint our position and became a very easy mark for the ACK-ACK. 

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I had been hit once in the tail about ten minutes earlier over the island of Alderney north of Jersey but at the time I figured it was our own ships that were firing on me. The ACK-ACK here at Jersey knocked the prop of my port engine and I had no control left in my elevators but managed to make a fairly smooth crash landing in a bay about 150 yards offshore. 

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I received quite a crack on my head and left eye and was knocked unconscious. When I recovered I stepped out on the wing to hold the dinghy when it came out the door. Then I was in the water having fallen off. The dinghy had sunk, in fact, it never opened. 

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My passengers (7)  had life jackets but three of the five crew did not. My co-pilot, engineer and I did not. We ditched the aircraft when it appeared that it was going to sink, 10 of the eleven started to swim ashore. One of the men would not leave the tail where he remained and sank with the plane. 

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I lagged behind the others helping one of the passengers and when we finally arrived near the shore I counted 7 or 8 left but the cliffs were so steep and the waves so rough it was impossible to hold on to them. The waves would smash you against the rocks so after looking it over, I let the poor passengers go and swam about 30 yards offshore and floated. 

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All the others kept trying to climb on the cliffs and drowned. Seven bodies were covered. I remained offshore for another hour when a light appeared up on the cliff and finally, I was fished out on the end of a rope by the Germans."