Caught this surfin the web here...

simply amazing photo...
note the props still turning...

Poor bastards. Wonder what happened to the rest of the crew?

Somehow, the word "Geronimo" comes to mind.

Maybe the radio operator, ball turret, waist gunners and tail gunner made it out, but I'd bet that killed everyone in the front.

I wouldn't want to be that close to an exploding AA round...

But there are more dramatic photos of flak hit B-17's


there was one PIC I remember of one only slightly less dammaged that the cockpit has been blown away, but the aircraft was flown home AND EVENTUALLY LANDED by the Bombardier using the bomardier's controls.... !

Fortunatly the aircraft was struck during the bomb run.
otherwise the Bomberdiers controls would not have been engaged.

then there is that famous Movie camera shot of the B-24 hit in the wingroot causing a catastrophic wingspar failure
the aircraft folds and burns.

And yet another captured in a sequence of stills by a bomb drop camera where one B17 flies UNDER and is struck in the left horizontal stabilizer by a falling (but not yet armed) 500lb bomb.

the stabilizer is of corse broken off the aircraft which imediatly pitched down and is lost.

And yet another where an 88 round entered the aircraft through one of the waste gun positions and detonated against the inside "roof" of the fuselage basically blowing the "roof" and "walls" off of the fuselage... the aircraft actually returned to base and landed. IIRC one of the gunners actually survived.

To me pictures of battle dammaged bombers that managed to return to base are actually far more "interesting" than
destroyed bombers that haven't finished falling out of the sky yet.... yes those dammaged aircraft that eventually crashed were "dramatic", but I'm sure their aircrews
would have had a different word to describe it...

But that's just my opinion....

BTW, if anyone did make it out they would have to have acted FAST to get out, please note the position of the elevators... they are clearly visible to be in the pitch down position...

the crew would have had 5-7 seconds to both decide to bail out and accomplish their egress.
That's 5-7 seconds from the beginning of the pitch-down 2-3 of those seconds are already gone in that PIC.
And please bear in mind that the pilot isn't going to be giving them a "bail out" order...


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A family friend who died a few years ago told me a story. He was a tailgunner in a B-17. He said that we were attacked by three 109's and the entire tail was shot off above his head. He said there was about 6 feet of tail left. The pilot made it back to England and he had picture showing the damage. To this day I do not know how he got it back but I bet the pilot and crew had to have their seats surgerically removed from their ass's. He said he was unable to move from his position because it had damaged the passageway between him and waistgunners. He said he expirenced nothing more scary in his entire life. I have a lot of respect all those guys.

quote:

Originally posted by MyNameIsEarl:
A family friend who died a few years ago told me a story. He was a tailgunner in a B-17. He said that we were attacked by three 109's and the entire tail was shot off above his head. He said there was about 6 feet of tail left. The pilot made it back to England and he had picture showing the damage. To this day I do not know how he got it back but I bet the pilot and crew had to have their seats surgerically removed from their ass's. He said he was unable to move from his position because it had damaged the passageway between him and waistgunners. He said he expirenced nothing more scary in his entire life. I have a lot of respect all those guys.

IIRC most versions of the B17 had a seperate escape hatch for the tail gunner, because without it the tailgunner would have been the hardest position in the aircraft to egress from.... Yes, including the Ball turret...
Though most ball turret gunners didn't wear their parachute inside the turret making using the escape hatch in the turret itself less than useful.


And I don't believe it was all that easy for a waist gunner to escape, the slip stream would make it difficult to escape through the open gunports. proceedure was to escape through the bomb bay.

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Interesting stuff Allan. He said he could not get out until they landed so I assume he used what you are referring to. I never asked. As with most ww2 vets I have known, they really did not want to talk it but if they did I was always listening. Kind of like a kid watching cartoons.

This is getting off the subject, but mny grandmother scolded me once for asking my grandfather when I younger because everytime he would talk about the war he would get nightmares. My grandmother asked me not to encourage him. I wish I new more about what he did but I know some and that is enough.

When I lived in Savannah, a fellow who went to church with me had been a B-17 tailgunner. The entire empennage of his aircraft was separated from the fuselage by a mid-air (I believe). He was trapped inside.

He talked to me about it once after a local newspaper ran a story about the incident. He confirmed the story that while the semi-aerodynamic shape fluttered down in upright spirals, he resigned himself to his fate and lit his last cigarette.

To his great surprise, impact with the snowy downslope of a mountain wasn't severe and he survived with some injury.

I think this is the guy?

I'm 47 and my father was too young back then (he was born in '35) but he had several cousins and step brothers that ALL served in the 8th AF....

Two of them came back but never discussed the war
the third simply didn't return.

The B-17 he was on (Top turret gunner) was last seen decending (controlled descent) and turning for home with two engines out after having jettisoned it's bombload.

From where it was last seen other aircraft had made it home on two engines, but you never know....

I think his aircraft is more than likely on the bottom of the North sea somewhere.

One of my father's (step)Aunts (since deceased) had high hopes for them finding his remains back in the early 90's when the dutch were draining a section of the Zuilder Zee.... and they were finding aircraft that had ditched.... but...

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One of the books about the flying around the Soloman Islands mentions a problem with pilots that mysteriously failed to return from missions. Then one pilot was seen to be falling from his plane with no parachute followed by his inflated life raft. It seems the life rafts were inflating due to some failure. The inflating raft forced the pilots to unbuckle the parachute harness and open the canopy due to the pressure. The pilot was forced out of the plane to his death.
The corrective action was to duct tape a combat knife to the interior of the plane.

Allan

That often seen photo of the B-24 coming apart was not hit by flak. It was done in by a bomb dropped by the flight above.

God bless that generation for the carnage they went through for us.

quote:

Originally posted by Allan DeGroot:

quote:

Originally posted by MyNameIsEarl:
A family friend who died a few years ago told me a story. He was a tailgunner in a B-17. He said that we were attacked by three 109's and the entire tail was shot off above his head. He said there was about 6 feet of tail left. The pilot made it back to England and he had picture showing the damage. To this day I do not know how he got it back but I bet the pilot and crew had to have their seats surgerically removed from their ass's. He said he was unable to move from his position because it had damaged the passageway between him and waistgunners. He said he expirenced nothing more scary in his entire life. I have a lot of respect all those guys.

IIRC most versions of the B17 had a seperate escape hatch for the tail gunner, because without it the tailgunner would have been the hardest position in the aircraft to egress from.... Yes, including the Ball turret...
Though most ball turret gunners didn't wear their parachute inside the turret making using the escape hatch in the turret itself less than useful.


And I don't believe it was all that easy for a waist gunner to escape, the slip stream would make it difficult to escape through the open gunports. proceedure was to escape through the bomb bay.

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On the B 17's that I've seen I didn't see any with an escape hatch for the tailgunner. From what I was told when the plane was on the ground you could crawl back to the tail gun position, but in flight with the rear tailwheel up, you couldn't or had a very difficult time to crawl around it. My father in law was in one that went down over Hungary. He was one of four that made it out. He spent 18 months in a Germon POW camp.

Went those planes are going down out of control I was told the centrifugal force made it difficult to be able to maneuver to bail out.

Back to the escape hatch. I was just saying I've never seen a B 17 with one, not that they didn't exist. In this website http://www.b17warhorse.fws1.com/photo3.html
there is mention and photo of it.

that's good to know about that B24 they never show the beginning of the clip to reveal what caused it, but there are similar clips of other B24s breaking up in flight from combat dammage.

but it isn't only combat dammage and friendly fire that'll kill you.
I remember reading about seemingly "minor issue" with P-47 fighters.

It seems that the Oxygen control handle on the left side of the cockpit would snag on the pilot's jacket sleeve and inadvenrtantly get knocked into "High flow" and if the pilot didn't notice he'd run out of 02 at altitude and simply nod off and often nobody would notice him fall out of formation.... just vanish.

One pilot DID notice and had his regulator relocated in the cockpit by his crewchief.
so that the handle couldn't snag and "adjust itself".

Then the aircraft went in for some sort of upgrade and the upgrade mechs restored it to factory condition, so he had his chief changed it to the way he wanted.
Then the aircraft went back again for some other sort of upgrade and they "corrected" it again, this time accompanied by a "Reply by endorsement letter" asking to explain why he had ordered an "unauthorized modification"

He replied to the letter while he waited for his crewchief to change it yet again (this was getting tedious) and he never heard back from anyone... mysteriously the next new P-47 arriving at the squadron had his "personal modification" already done.

To this day nobody even wants to guess how many pilots died at altitude from hypoxia because of that poorly thought out style of oxygen regulator of it's position....

All we know is that a lot of pilots never returned from missions even if their fighter group never encountered the
enemy that day....

The moral of the story? The "little stuff" will kill you every bit as dead as a 1000lb ARMED bomb falling into your aircraft from the group above you, or a "Golden BB" AA shell.

OR nothing can be considered "little stuff" until it DOESN'T kill you...

or that EVERYONE is trying to kill you, even if not intentionally if they succede it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not.

Are you paranoid enough?

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quote:

Then the aircraft went back again for some other sort of upgrade and they "corrected" it again, this time accompanied by a "Reply by endorsement letter" asking to explain why he had ordered an "unauthorized modification"

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Ain't that strange!!!!
While my military flights were all "one Way' as a missile fire control man I can sure relate to this story. We had a near genius on one ship I was one, just happened to be an enlisted man with no degree or credentials. Anyway, he designed a 'speedometer' for the AN/SPQ-5A radar that gave a read-out of the airspeed of a tracked target based on the range rate differential of the radar return. Installed and it worked very well. He drew up a set of plans and how it was incorporated in the gear, got the gun boss to sign off on it and submitted it to BuWeps. Straight away a letter was returned ordering the unit removed as it was an 'unauthorized mod," etc.
Surprise, surprise - less than six months later we had an OrdAlt to install this wonderful unit, exactly the same as this sailor had designed and built it. Wonder how much dinero Sperry-Rand picked up on that one????
As to the escape hatch on the B17, I just finished a book entitled "Looking Into Hell" about the RAF and the nighttime bombing of Fortress Europe, and one of the things that struck me was the ball turret for the rear gunner on the Lancaster (I think). This thing had to be stowed before the gunner could get out of it and if no power I don't think it could be stowed. What about that for a design feature?
I have also heard the gunner in the Sperry ball turret re the B17 could not get into the ball with his 'chute on so he had to get out, put on his chute and then jump - Good Luck!
The more I read and the more I learn bout the way it was in WWII the prouder I am of the guys that took care of business and the happier I am that I was not there. A generation later re the 'nam was bad enough!

The B-24 Liberator also had to have it's ball turret retracted for the gunner to get out of the turret... and as the actual "ball" was the same...
The B-24 also could not land with the ball extended.

As for amusing one of my favorites is downward looking
movie film clips from departing bombers and some of the dammage to the local flora off the ends of the runway.

No, not the scrap marks made by bombers that couldn't get airborne or overran the runway on landing I'm talking clusters of scrape marks...
From ordinance jettisoned on takeoff.

Typically on the takeoff roll the Bombardier would have his thumb on the jettison switch incase they lost an engine during the takoff roll.

I think very highly of the ability of being able to suddenly lighten the aircraft by 4-8 tons in the event of an engine failure.
it was SOP to connect the wires that retained the arming pins from the bombs to the aircraft to be attached in flight
AFTER the aircraft reached altitude and formed up, so that if jettisoning the bomb load on takeoff they wouldn't be sprinkling armed bombs over some english village.

what was even more amusing is pictures of bomb shaped holes (ala' a Looney Tunes Cartoon) in the bomb bay doors of various typess of aircraft.

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I remember watching a documentary on a B17 crew several years ago, and the ball turret gunner was telling this story where he was in a bar and this other guy was saying that he had the worse job in the AF, and so the gunner said "hey, I'll trade jobs with you" and the guy said "You must be a ball turret gunner"

I've got a few more stories from him, including the time his aircraft and the crew he was part of "volunteered" to photo-recon the first Russsian nuke test, but my first cousin from Florida, who died several years back was the radio navigator on a B-29. I'm terrible on names but I think the pilot was named McPherson. He was a vet of WWII, and had either been called back up or whatever for Korea. He had something like 10-12,000 hours at that time.

At any rate, I think they were on a photo-recon out of Japan, when they were hit by some kind of artillery fire over Korean enemy positions. Pilot radioed the crew that he had about 10 minutes air time left (losing fuel) and that they were over land but the North Koreans controlled the ground and that they had been killing all aviators they captured. The pilot said he thought he could make the Yellow (Yalu) Sea and he was going to ride it in but that if anyone wanted to bail out over land then to get with it and no hard feelings. I can't remember the crew count (8?) but they all voted to remain with the ship. They barely cleared the cliffs above the sea while taking machine gun fire. Pilot told them to brace and to be ready for two impacts, one soft and one hard. Meanwhile my cousin is working the radios trying to get in touch with a rescue aircraft. I forget what they called them PBYs (?) and he had one in contact but the pilot told him he was short on fuel and couldn't make their position. Said he'd send another one. Plane made a perfect ditch landing and my cousin was one of the only ones hurt since he was still working radio when they hit. Split his face a bit some way or the other but not too bad. They all made it out into two rafts. Meanwhile it was dark, and the N. Koreans were firing artillery blind at their position a couple of mile offshore. They had survival suits on but the air temp was something like 20 degrees and the water wasn't much warmer. The waves were 8 to 10 and building. The survival radios had very short battery life, so they decided to use one after they judged the time the second rescue flight would take. It ran out of juice and they started calling on the second one.....just as they thought it was starting to go, the rescue pilot picked their signal up and they gave him a heading specifying "DO NOT, repeat DO NOT drop flares", they'd call him in. They were still getting intermittent artillery rounds around them. Pilot brought it in and they boarded the craft by being towed one by one through the water. Pilot told them with that load of men and waves breaking over the top of the aircraft that he couldn't take off. Pilot of B-29, McPherson, said, "That's ok, this is the best boat I've ever been on" and they motored out to a destroyer offshore some miles.

Ron's best stories were about his Clarence, the gold toothed dog, in his day, the best hog dog in the state of Florida. I miss Ron, he was a character and a helluva hunter. RIP.

Most like a Grumman HU-16 Albatross as the cats were
ostly gone by Korea and the Albatross was more or less purpose built for air-sea rescue callsign "Dumbo"

The Albatross was capable of landing in rougher sea conditions than the Catalina was and since rough sea condions were the norm off Korea...

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