Posted about B-17 pilots and crew last week, and my brother found this interview online

I always get disturbed when I see this image of a B-17 that had just been hit by flak, ripping off part of the wing. I don't know how you would be able to bail out of a plane spiraling out of control like that.

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I would have picked B-17 crew over paratrooper or marine in the pacific for survival but apparently that’s the wrong pic.

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I always thought the same until I read “ Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany” (book from which the mini-series is based).

After reading the book, I think I would preferred to storm the Omaha or Utah beaches (not the first wave), and if surviving that, fought across Europe to the wars end - your odds of surviving were higher - than to be a crew member on a B-17 flying the 25, later 30 and 35 missions, over Nazi Germany required to rotate home.

Yeah and when you remember that these people were all college kids and tested to be the smartest recruits in the military and 26,000 were killed as they were treated like cannon fodder, makes you wonder WTF they were doing.

Since we developed the bomb, did the daylight raids really shorten the war or just wipe out a big chuck of future engineers, innovation experts, doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. like what happen Ed in WW1 to the English.

The Brits were right, Flying without fighter support in daylight over central Germany was a suicide mission

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e tail gunner’s turret

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Negative. That's the ball turret. The tail gunner was in...the tail.

Yeah they thought the armament on the B-17 was so good they didn’t need fighter escort protection, or that’s what they said. It was a FUBAR decision for sure.

Then was the range issue, the Germans quickly figured this out, and would just sit on top of the bombers etc and wait for the fighters to turn around and then attack. It’s really incredible they kept going back up. The odds of them surviving 25 or more missions were terrible.

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Flying without fighter support in daylight over central Germany was a suicide mission

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That's why we stopped doing it after late 1943 for the most part.

Because fighter escorts, mainly the P51, were able to go deeper into Germany. The Navy was the highest casualty service at wars end. But the first year or 2 of the air raids were brutal.

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Grandfather was a turret gunner in a B-26. Did some time in a B-29 and 17.

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My great uncle was on the B-24 named after Mike the Tiger. They had to bail after sustaining damage. Luckily he got picked up by Belgian resistance.

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But the first year or 2 of the air raids were brutal.

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Yeah it was an incredible miscalculation by command that the bombers could fight off the Luftwaffe fighters without the extra protection afforded by the fighter escorts.

I believe the number is somewhere around 80k aviators killed in Europe alone for the US. The British lost something like 60k as well I think. Took a big ol' brass set to step on a plane for a bombing sortie in Europe back then.

My Uncle who died at 96 yrs in 2011, was a top turret gunner and was a part of the Schweinfurt raid. We talked to him about it, and as he retold the story, I could tell he got emotional and got a little lost thinking about it. Prior to WWII, he was in the Marines and went to boot at Parris Island. Later he got assigned personal guard duty for FDR. They would be with him when he went down to Warm Springs, GA. When Pearl Harbor happened, he was out of the Marines by then. He tried to go back to the Marines, but they were full. So he went into the Army Air Corp and ended up a top turret gunner. He saw death come close several times. One time a bullet lodged in his headphones and just pierced his ear. Another time his plane was shot down in the English Channel. The pilot's name was Andy Miracle. The navigator's last name was Lord. I cant remember his first name. So their plane was named the Miracle Tribe. He said the Germans would come at you directly aligned with the Sun. On one mission this happened , and he just kept the guns pointed directly into the Sun , blazing. He told us he could see the pilot dead in the cockpit and he had aimed his plane so that it would impact their plane. At the last minute, the pilot rolled the B17, and he said they fell 7,000 feet, and he was positive they were all going to die. The German plane just barely missing them, and somehow the pilot regained control and leveled the plane out. They flew missions over north Africa too. There were other close calls. It was truly a miracle he lived to be 96. Talk about a FULL life.