On this occasion they were experiencing the same kind of potential danger that we were by pressing their attacks ferociously.ĭuring that mission, the plastic nose of your plane was heavily damaged, which forced you to fly exposed to the elements for more than five hours in order to get home. As soon as that happened their fighters could pick us off at their leisure. We would go ahead and drop our bombs and they would hope the flak would damage us sufficiently enough to force us out of formation. Prior to that they usually let us alone on our bombing runs. We had never seen them throw up such a heavy barrage of defenses.Īlso, what we had never experienced before was that their fighters were attacking us through their own flak. The Germans had moved in some 300 88mm guns to protect their targets. Flying over Bremen, we experienced the heaviest anti-aircraft defense we had ever seen. Speaking with the National World War II Museum, you said that during one such bomb run, “The flak was so thick that you could put your wheels down and taxi on it.” Can you talk about the conditions you flew through that day? The bombardier's position of the B-17G Flying Fortress. The pilot and copilot had to just sit there with their arms crossed waiting to take over if necessary. That was the way the ship leveled up to make the most effective bomb drop. For what felt like an interminably long period, the bombsight was connected to the flight controls. The sad fact of it was that of all the 10 crewmen, the pilot and copilot were the only two members of the crew who didn’t have a gun to shoot back with.Īnd during a bomb run the actual flying of the airplane was done through the bombsight by the bombardier. How they withstood that cold I’ll never know. You had respect for what they did and how they did it, particularly the gunners who were in the waist of the aircraft standing in an open window. While you were in battle you had to rely on each member of your crew to perform their job to perfection or else you didn’t survive. How did expectations for survival impact the bonds developed within a crew? The sheer terror that we confronted was so devastating that it left a mark on us for life. It was so horrific that just one mission could turn our hair white. That our chances of coming back were so minimal that we should accept our fate and just do the best that we could, for as long as we could.įacing your mortality to that degree is a very sobering and maturing experience. That was the mindset that we were supposed to take into combat. You’re all going to be killed and you might as well accept it.” When we were preparing to go overseas our commanding officer called us together and said, “Look at the man on either side of you. Can you describe the mental toll of confronting your own - or your men’s - mortality with each mission? Robert Morgan, remarked that you might have breakfast with 10 crewmen, but dinner with only two. That air superiority was evident when the pilot of the Memphis Belle, Capt. But they devastated us with that technique for as long as they could. It wasn’t until Boeing developed the G model (Boeing B-17G), which had a chin turret, that we would be able to cover that void. They played chicken with us, firing the whole way. There was a gap in-between the top turret and ball turret guns so they would fly in that slot, straight through our formations. The first of which was that we could not fire our guns straight forward.
#Bomber crew wiki professional#
Through a baptism of fire, we found out how professional and clever they were in discovering our vulnerabilities.
Your girlfriends and wives are being romanced back in the States, but as long as you’re here we’re going to teach you a lesson.” And by God they did. When our group arrived in England, “Axis Sally” ( Mildred Gillars) came on the radio and welcomed us, by name, to the war saying, “This isn’t your war, you don’t have any business being here.
They’d been fighting on the Eastern Front, through the Battle of Britain, and they knew what they were doing. The minute that we crossed the French coast we were in their backyard. The Germans were professionals and we were rank amateurs.
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