Mission 200.Hannover.

On 30 January 1944 the aircraft encountered severe mechanical difficulties northeast of Osnabrück en route to Brunswick. All four electronic superchargers failed, and the engineer checked fuses and relays without success. The plane descended to 135 mph and the crew jettisoned the bombs. Shortly afterward oil pressure failed on engine #2. Engine #4 caught fire and the propeller ran away; the crew could not feather it. The plane was losing 155 feet per minute descending through cloud cover. The crew threw guns overboard and moved to ditching positions. At 1,000 feet they broke through the clouds and found water below but land to the west — the navigator identified it as the Zuiderzee. Pilot Killian executed a crash landing approximately five miles south of the Zuiderzee and about five miles north of Amersfoort, Holland, at approximately 13:30. The bombardier jettisoned the bombsight over the Zuiderzee before landing. The plane nosed up and crumpled as far as the pilot's windshield; no crew members were injured. The co-pilot detonated the radio equipment immediately after landing. There was no time to burn the aircraft before civilians began to collect from 2-3 miles away near Amersfoort. Killian ordered the crew to scatter. The wreckage was examined after the crash landing and was found to be wrecked. No parachutes were used — the entire crew remained with the aircraft for the crash landing.