The B-17 Flying Fortress was without a doubt the backbone of America's bombing campaign over Europe. But flying in one demanded insane mental toughness, because the odds of coming home were ridiculously low. Half of all crewmen were killed, wounded, or captured. The stories of those who somehow made it back reveal only a glimpse of how horrific operating the B-17 really was.
The Air War Over Europe
When the United States entered World War Two, it joined Britain in launching a massive joint bombing campaign against Nazi Germany. The goal was to cripple Germany's ability to wage war by destroying it from above. If they could level factories, break infrastructure, and shut down military production, maybe they wouldn't even need a full-scale invasion. Allied commanders believed the war could be decided in the sky, and the centerpiece of that strategy was the B-17.
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| B-17 Bombers Flying over Europe |
By the time the definitive B-17G rolled out, it carried thirteen .50 caliber machine guns arranged across almost every angle of attack. Gunners in the waist, tail, and top turret could catch attackers from the sides or above, while the ball turret handled threats from below. If you tried to shoot it down, chances were high that something was already aiming back at you.
Unlike the British RAF, which switched to night bombing early on, the Americans believed in daylight precision raids. They thought that if you packed bombers in tight enough formations with overlapping fields of fire, they could fight their way through flak and fighters, drop their bombs right on target, and come back in one piece.
In practice, every fourth bomber was shot down. For the crew, the odds were even worse. One out of every two never made it back. And even when bombers did survive the trip, only about twenty percent of bombs actually struck their intended targets.
The Flak Problem
The biggest threat early in the war was enemy fighters. That's why the B-17 carried machine guns in every direction. But once the P-51 Mustang entered the fight as a long range escort, the odds against the Luftwaffe started to shift.
That still left flak, and nothing on the B-17 could stop that.
German anti-aircraft defenses were brutal. They built tight defensive rings around anything of value, with 88 and 105 millimeter guns arranged in massive batteries, dozens and sometimes hundreds working together. These were coordinated strikes guided by radar and fire control systems that calculated exactly where the bombers would be and when.
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| Flak Shell Explosions |
As the formation approached its target, the sky would burst open with puffs of black smoke, each one a shell exploding right where the bombers were flying. A direct hit meant instant death, but even near misses were deadly. Shrapnel would slice through the aluminum fuselage, tear apart control cables, rupture fuel tanks, and cut through crew positions like paper.
And the worst part was the bombers couldn't dodge. Standard protocol required them to stay in tight formation. No weaving, no diving, no evasive maneuvers. The bombardier needed a stable platform to aim. So as the sky exploded around them, the crew had no choice but to fly straight through it and hope they came out the other side.
You'd see it happen right in front of you. A bomber in the formation would take a hit, start trailing smoke, then slowly drop out of the sky. You'd hope to see a parachute or two open below, but most of the time there weren't any.
The Bomber That Came Back in Two Pieces
It was February 1st, 1943. A group of B-17s lifted off from Biskra, Algeria, heading for German occupied seaports in Tunisia. Among them was a bomber nicknamed All-American.
The mission went as planned. Bombs were dropped and the formation began the 300 mile journey back. That's when two Messerschmitt fighters launched a head-on attack.
The gunners opened fire, shooting down the first fighter. The second one peeled off but its pilot had been hit and the aircraft spiraled out of control, slamming through the tail section of All-American. Its wing sliced deep into the fuselage, nearly shearing the tail clean off. The tail gunner suddenly found himself in what was basically a separate aircraft, the rear end barely hanging on by a few thin strips of metal and fragments of the floor beneath him.
From another bomber nearby, Lieutenant Charles Cutforth snapped a photo that would become one of the most surreal images of the entire air war. A B-17 still flying with its tail almost fully detached, swinging freely in the air.
Two engines were out. The left horizontal stabilizer was gone. The elevator was missing. The rudder and vertical fin were mangled. Nearly every control wire to the rear had been severed. In aviation terms, the plane was done.
But the autopilot had been engaged at the exact moment of the collision. Instead of relying on mechanical cables that had just been destroyed, the system used electrical wiring and servo motors. That gave the pilots just enough control to keep flying. The rest of the formation slowed down to fly beside their wounded comrade, watching in disbelief as All-American somehow stayed in the air, made it all the way back, and landed safely with no serious injuries.
The bomber was even repaired and sent back into combat until the war's end.
20,000 Feet and No Parachute
On January 3rd, 1943, the Eighth Air Force launched a major raid over Saint-Nazaire, France, targeting German U-boat pens. One of the bombers, a B-17F nicknamed "Snap! Crackle! Pop!", carried 20-year-old ball turret gunner Alan Magee on his seventh mission.
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| The "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" Bomber |
As they neared the target, flak filled the sky. An explosion knocked out an engine. Then a direct hit tore into the right wing and the plane began spiraling. Magee was trapped in the ball turret, a four-foot wide space too small to hold a parachute. His chute was stored in the fuselage.
Somehow he made it inside the bomber, but the parachute was destroyed. At 20,000 feet, another explosion ripped through the aircraft and blew Magee out into open air. He lost consciousness from the freezing cold and lack of oxygen and plummeted four miles down.
Instead of dying on impact, Magee crashed through the glass roof of the Saint-Nazaire train station. The angled panels slowed him just enough to survive, and he slammed onto the floor below. German soldiers found him barely alive with a broken right arm and leg, an injured nose and eye, and 28 shrapnel wounds across his body. They were so stunned he was breathing that they rushed him to medical care. After 18 months as a prisoner of war, Magee was liberated in 1945. He lived to age 84.
But Magee was not the only one to fall out of a bomber and survive.
Trapped in the Tail
In November 1943, Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran flew as tail gunner in a B-17 named Ricky Tickary on a mission over Bremen. As they neared the city, Luftwaffe fighters swarmed the formation. Moran was shot in both arms. An explosion broke his ribs. Then he discovered his parachute had been shredded. Seconds later, a direct hit ripped the entire tail section off the plane.
Moran was trapped in a tumbling metal coffin, spinning through the sky at 20,000 feet with no way out. He stopped struggling, relaxed, and braced for the end. But the tail slammed into a tall pine tree, slowing the crash just enough to save his life. When German troops arrived expecting a body, they found Moran still alive.
His skull was crushed and his body badly wounded. A Serbian doctor, himself a prisoner of war, managed to treat him with minimal supplies. Moran spent 18 months in a German prison camp and survived until liberation.
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| Eugene Moran and his Bomber |
Just months later, in January 1944, tail gunner James Ley faced nearly the same ordeal. His bomber Skippy collided with another B-17 in thick clouds near Athens. Like Moran, Ley ended up trapped in a detached tail section falling from 20,000 feet. The wreck slammed into trees, slowing the impact and saving his life. He climbed out and found himself completely alone. The rest of the bomber had vanished. He was later rescued by Greek Orthodox monks who saw the crash.
For those not thrown out midair, bailing out was the only hope, but even that was dangerous. The B-17 had narrow exits and tight hatches. Crewmen wore bulky suits and often had to jump while the aircraft was spinning or on fire. Of all B-17s shot down, only about 25 percent of crew members successfully bailed out and deployed their parachutes.
Flying Without the Nose
On October 15th, 1944, the bomber Lovely Julie took a direct flak hit right to the nose over Cologne. First Lieutenant Lawrence DeLancy had just watched the bombardier release their payload when the world in front of him exploded. A flak shell detonated in the nose compartment, killing Staff Sergeant George Abbott instantly.
Abbott's body absorbed most of the shrapnel that would have shredded the rest of the crew.
The entire nose of the B-17 simply vanished. Plexiglass, metal, internal supports, gone. DeLancy found himself at 20,000 feet flying an aircraft with no front end, basically sitting in a wind tunnel exposed to minus forty degree air at 200 miles per hour.
The blast had shredded the instrument panel. No altimeter, no compass, no airspeed indicator. The oxygen system was knocked out too, which meant the crew would begin to suffocate if they stayed at altitude for more than a few minutes.
DeLancy dropped the nose, lowering altitude in search of breathable air. But that meant flying low across German territory packed with anti-aircraft batteries and fighter patrols. It was the only shot they had.
Navigator Raymond Leu, who had lost all his maps and equipment in the blast, tried to guide them home using only landmarks and instinct. The rest of the crew, freezing and exposed to the wind, braced for the crash they were certain was coming.
But DeLancy held the aircraft together. The bomber limped across the Rhine, crossed the Channel, and made it all the way back to Nuthampstead, England, with no working flaps, no brakes, and no nose.
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| The Lovely Julie Bomber that Landed in England |
For that, DeLancy was awarded the Silver Star.
Every fourth bomber shot down. One in two crewmen never came back. And yet, the ones who did brought stories that sound impossible. Bombers split in half that kept flying, men who fell four miles and lived, and a pilot who landed a plane that had no face. That was life on a B-17.
Written by Andreja Rakočević, a military history writer and co-creator of the RogerRoger YouTube channel.