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a diver in a triple somersault. I didn’t see his chute
open.
A B-17 turned gradually out of the formation to the
right, maintaining altitude. In a split second the B-17
disappeared in brilliant explosion, from which the
only remains were four small balls of re, the fuel
tanks, which were quickly consumed as they fell
earthward.
Our airplane was endangered by various debris,
emergency hatches, exit doors, prematurely opened
parachutes, bodies and assorted fragments of B-17s
and Hun ghters breezed past us in the slip-stream.
I watched two ghters explode not far beneath, dis-
appearing in sheets of orange ame, B-17s dropping
out in every stage of distress, from engines on re
to control surfaces shot away, friendly and enemy
parachutes oating down, and, on the green carpet
far behind us, numerous funeral pyres of smoke
from fallen ghters marking our trail.
On we ew through the strewn wake of a desper-
ate air battle, where disintegrating aircraft were
commonplace and 60 chutes in the air at one time
were hardly worth a second look.
I watched a B-17 turn slowly to the right with its
cockpit a mass of ames. The copilot crawled out of
his window, held on with one hand, reached back
for his chute, buckled it on, let go and was whisked
back into the horizontal stabilizer. I believe the im-
pact killed him. His chute didn’t open.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and
still no let up in the attacks. The ghters queued
up like a breadline and let us have it. Each second
of time had a cannon shell in it. The strain of being
a clay duck in the wrong end of that aerial shoot-
ing gallery became almost intolerable as the minutes
accumulated towards the rst hour.
Our B-17 shook steadily with the re of the .50’s
and the air inside was heavy with smoke. It was
cold in the cockpit, but when I looked across at
Lt. Thomas Murphy, the pilot, and a good one, sweat
was pouring off his forehead and over his oxygen
mask. He turned the controls over to me for awhile.
It was a blessed relief to concentrate on holding sta-
tion in formation instead of watching those everlast-
ing ghters boring in. It was possible to forget the
ghters. Then the top-turret gunner’s twin muzzles
would pound away a foot above my head, giving
a realistic imitation of cannon shells exploding in the
cockpit, while I gave a better imitation of man jump-
ing six inches our of his seat.
A B-17 of the 95th Group, with its right Tokyo tanks
on re, dropped back about 200 feet above our right
wing and stayed there while 7 of the crew successive-
ly bailed out. Four went out the bomb-bay and exe-
cuted delayed jumps, one bailed out from the nose,
opened his chute prematurely and nearly fouled
the tail. Another went out the left waist-gun open-
ing, delaying his chute opening for a safe interval.
The tail gunner dropped out of his hatch, apparently
pulling the ripcord before he was clear of the ship.
His chute opened instantaneously, barely missing
the tail, and jerked him so hard that both his shoes
came off. He hung limp in the harness, whereas
the others had showed immediate signs of life after
their chutes opened, shifting around in the harness.
The B-17 then dropped back in a medium spiral and
I did not see the pilots leave. I saw it just before it
passed from view, several thousand feet below us,
with it’s right wing a solid sheet of yellow ame.
After we had been under constant attack for a solid
hour, it appeared certain that the 100th Group was
faced with annihilation. Seven of our group had
been shot down, the sky was still mottled with rising
ghters and it was only 1120 hours, with the target
time still 35 minutes away. I doubt if a man in the
group visualized the possibility of our getting much
further without 100% loss. I knew that I had long
since mentally accepted the fact of death, and that
it was simply a question of next second or the next
minute. I learned rst-hand that a man can resign
himself to the certainty of death without becoming
panicky. Our group re power was reduced 33%,
ammunition was running low. Our tail guns had
to be replenished from other gun stations. Gunners
were becoming exhausted and nerve-tortured from
the prolonged strain, and there was an awareness
on everybody’s part that something must have gone
wrong. We had been the aiming point for the Luff-
waffe and we fully expected to nd the rest primed
for us at the target.
Fighter tactics were running true to form. Frontal
attackers hit the low squadron and the lead squad-
ron, while rear attackers went for the high. The man-
ner of their attacks showed that some pilots were
old-timers, some amateurs, and that all knew pretty
denitely where we were going and were inspired
with a fanatical determination to stop us before we
got there. The old-timers came in on frontal attacks
with a noticeably slower rate of closure, apparently
throttled back, obtaining greater accuracy than those
that bolted through us wide out. They did some
nice shooting at ranges of 500 or more yards, and
in many cases seemed able to time their thrusts so
as to catch the top and ball turret gunners engaged
with rear and side attacks. Less experienced pilots
were pressing home attacks to 250 yards and less
to get hits, offering point-blank targets on the break
away, ring long bursts of 20 seconds, and in some
cases actually pulling up instead of going down and
HISTORY
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August 2024