Boeing B-17 plane - Flying Fortress / WW2 Documentary / WHD

[Music] it was the most potent symbol of american air power in military history designed to fend off ferocious attacks of the german luftwaffe it dealt a death blow to nazi wartime industrial production and raised hitler's capital to the ground [Music] to me it was the most beautiful thing ever built but a great plane still is each crewed by ten men thousands of them would fly the most perilous missions of the second world war many would never return if it hadn't been for a b-17 i more likely wouldn't be sitting here talking to you using color reenactments and rare archive film battle stations takes to the skies in the legendary b-17 flying fortress [Music] 1918 with the conclusion of the war to end all wars military powers around the world recognized that warfare would never be the same [Music] military thinking moved away from the stalemate of trench warfare and focused on the use of the new wonder weapons aircraft it had become apparent that bombers would prove decisive in any future conflict the bomber it was believed would always get through [Music] in the 1930s this bomber doctrine gathered real momentum attention now turned to modernizing america's obsolescent air corps modern bombers were needed to replace the fabric and wooden aircraft of the last wall on august the 8th 1934 the u.s army air corps issued a circular proposal that called for a bomber with a maximum speed of 250 miles per hour it must operate at ten thousand feet and have a range of two thousand miles designs would be company-funded and submitted for testing within the year the victor would win a production run of 220 aircraft teetering on the brink of bankruptcy the boeing aircraft company leapt at the challenge in a bold move boeing under the visionary leadership of edward c wells committed most of its capital and manpower to the project they called model 299. it was a fantastic gamble in august 1934 boeing began building a radical all-metal four-engined aircraft it had beautiful lines it was a low-wing airplane it that all the turrets were were attractive it was just a nice-looking airplane and boeing has always been noted for making beautiful airplanes boeing's new plane would be fitted with an array of machine guns and an internal weapons bay it was a bold design one that far exceeded the requirements of the [Music] proposal on july the 28th 1935 just 11 months after the competition had started boeing's model 299 rolled out of the company's factory in seattle becoming america's first all-metal four-engine bomber [Music] closely guarded the army's newest bomber and america's largest land plane is prepared for its first flight at seattle it's boeing note her machine gun turrets the ship weighs 15 tons and is reported to have cost nearly half a million a newspaper reporter attending the event was impressed by the immense size and the number of gun emplacements on the aircraft and exclaimed why it's a flying fortress well my father used to say look at all that armor you got and i said dad you could put your finger through the side of the airplane if you really pushed real hard it was just an aluminum box flying in the sky is all it was with some guns sticking out of it with a load of bombs like a paper bag with all of the hardware and all the guns that it had on it it truly was a flying fortress boeing's legendary aircraft was born but the all-important contract was still to be won alongside boeing's offering two rival twin engine designs were also evaluated by the army air corps martin's b12 and douglas's db-1 on the morning of the 30th of october disaster struck during evaluation the boeing prototype bomber stalled after takeoff and crashed at right field the boeing aircraft company had invested in the model 299 project without any commitment from the army air corps and now the program land tatters in addition they lost their two pilots which effectively put them out of running for the contract boeing's model 299 was disqualified from the competition and the company lost the contract douglas's db-1 triumphed and 133 of the bombers were ordered but despite the crash model 299 had impressed the air corps and a small number were purchased for further evaluation it was not the order boeing had hoped for but it was a start modifications to the aircraft followed and in february 1937 the air corps ordered 10 more aircraft now called yb17s these aircraft fitted with superchargers had a ceiling of thirty thousand feet but in the dark days of september 1939 as europe descended into war douglas's bombers were taking too long to get off the production lines and were proving underpowered boeing's b-17 was the only operational heavy bomber in the united states but the air corps owned just 30. new yb17s would now be fitted with power-operated turrets above and below the fuselage and two more sets of twin guns were added to the tail and radio operators positions [Music] by march 1941 b-17s were being transformed from an advanced prototype to a full powered super bomber ready for war under the terms of its lend lease agreements america sent 20 of these fortress yb17s to britain's royal air force the b-17s first delivery flight ended in disaster at high altitude over the skies of england the bomber experienced a power failure and crashed it was an inauspicious start but despite its problems on the 8th of july 1941 two fortress ones belonging to the raf bombed wilhelm's harvan in germany bill elmshofen the main target is a number one target for it's a major naval base and a great shipbuilding center this first mission also ended in disaster at high altitude all of the guns froze and the bombs were dropped wide of the target later eight fortress ones were shot down it looked as though the b-17 would go down in history as a failure the british experience of the fortress one was a resounding failure the aircraft was found to suffer from a number of mechanical failures the guns froze went at high altitude it lacked defensive armament to fight off a determined attack by the enemy and it was also difficult to put ordnance on target from that high the raf therefore concluded that the best thing would be to increase its defensive armament use it in greater numbers for protective purposes and also to use it at lower altitudes the raf immediately pulled the fortress from european combat and promptly reassigned it to the middle east [Music] as war intensified in europe and diplomatic relations between the usa and japan deteriorated america moved its yb17s to bases in the pacific [Music] on the 7th of december 1941 as a flight of unarmed yb17s arrived at hickam field hawaii japan ended america's isolationism at pearl harbor 12 b-17s were destroyed on the ground and all of the unarmed aircraft flying in were damaged or lost from the ashes of the destruction in hawaii america's troubled b-17s had to prove its doubt doubters wrong with america at war the flying fortress is about to be thrown into the thick of the action in the desperate days following pearl harbor as america rushed headlong into war production of yb17s went into full swing on december the 8th 1941 boeing executive jake harmon made a phone call to plant 2 at seattle his conversation was concise and to the point start building airplanes how many just start building nevermind the schedules tell us how much money and what things you need and when as harman made his call these seven teams in the pacific started flying reconnaissance missions to track the japanese battle fleet off the coast of luzon a japanese convoy was spotted five yb-17s attacked and the flying fortress became the first u.s aircraft to drop its bombs in world war ii but it was in europe that the fortress would become a legend by early 1942 in accordance with the allied europe first policy major general carl spatz suggested that the eighth air force be designated the core of the army air forces in britain [Music] now america prepared to send its new heavies to frontline units in england recognizing the value of bombing to the war in europe britain's prime minister winston churchill and president franklin roosevelt agreed on the use of air power in the theater churchill and roosevelt both unequivocally endorsed strategic bombing in january 1943 they had called for the unconditional surrender of germany and japan and they saw strategic bombing as the overwhelming force that would quickly end the war by destroying the german industrial complex and demoralizing its civilian population they reasoned that they could grind to a whole hitler's war machine early in 1942 allied command identified special targets to be given absolute priority submarine construction facilities aircraft factories ball bearing production plants and oil refineries were at the top of the list [Music] the raf and 8th air force planned a coordinated non-stop day and night bomber offensive from then on b-17s would operate by day in full view of the german luftwaffe flying a b-17 in combat without a fighter escort was pretty close to being suicidal it wasn't until they learned the lesson the hard way that you can't fly these airplanes they were just not well protected because the enemy that we were contending with was highly sophisticated good weapons and good airplanes on august the 17th 1942 the u.s launched its first raid of the war in europe with no fighter cover the b-17s made the attack on their own at 1526 hours the first daylight mission from a base in england was launched strategic air power was born [Music] as b-17s were to be operated without fighter escort great emphasis was placed on flying in a defensive wedge formation [Music] by stacking the aircraft in an orderly pattern it was believed that their arcs of fire would be enough to repel fighter attacks but this theory would be severely tested we in the united states the the army air corps at that time had no tactics they didn't know how to go at it and our adversary over in germany they've been fighting and flying since 1939 so they were old hands of what we were just learning you have the high squadron you had the low squadron in the middle squatter and you flew in a formation basically like this the tartar you flew and the reason for tight formation is that the fighters could not go through your formation and break it up which they would attempt to do no matter what angle a fighter came at you from he had a lot of 50 caliber machine gun shooting at him because of the way the formation was stacked almost every gunner on the right side of the aircraft for instance could could shoot at the fighter though the unescorted bombers had some protection against fighters there was nothing they could do to avoid flieger at their canon flack fired from the ground these lethal 88 millimeter shells were said to explode at the same altitude as the aircraft once the german gunners zeroed in on the b-17s the results could be devastating i always thought that flock was more dangerous than fighters were because you could see a fighter coming in you could shoot back but you never knew when you might get hit by the flag shell and there was lots of it they used to say the flag smoke was so thick you could walk on it up there and it was almost true well any aircraft it's like going down a bumpy road with a car with no shock absorbers on it and every time the shut the thing would go off you'd be bumping jumping up and down i mean you're going this way you're going right you're going left you're going up and down in january 1943 churchill and roosevelt met at the casablanca conference and agreed policy on the strategic bombing campaign in what became known as the casablanca directive the eighth air force was given the responsibility to ensure the progressive destruction and dislocation of the german military industrial and economic system [Music] but flying unescorted in daylight hours posed a real threat to the bomber's crews flying at a mere 200 miles per hour the b-17s were sitting ducks for the german luftwaffe [Music] at thirty thousand feet the crews of the unpressurized b-17s operated in extreme conditions encumbered by bulky clothing engaging an enemy fighter was no easy task it's 55 below zero up there and even though we had heaters in the cockpit the poor gunners back in the rear they had no heat and even though they wore heated suits some of them and wore a lot of a lot of clothing it was still very cold back there and frostbite was a problem for them biggest thing people don't realize people sweat at 45 degrees below zero you sit there sweating maybe it was fair sweat i don't know [Music] the crews had good reason to be fearful as german pilots identified a weakness in the aircraft's defenses a frontal attack concentrating on the nose with its minimal armor was the best way to down a heavy well when we first got there they made most of their attacks from the tail and that didn't bother the pilots because we couldn't see them then about halfway through where they switched the head-on stuff and it wasn't just one plane coming head-on it was a whole flight like four to six planes coming in they had more guts than dick tracy i'll tell you it it amazed me that one of these guys could take a one me 109 and fly right through the middle of your group you knew that they were showing off they were trying to scare the heck out of you and they were doing it the head-on attacks by the german airplanes would shoot out the people in the nose it was a vulnerable position they would get the pilots or get the bombardier or get the navigator in april 1943 during an attack on a fokker wolf plant at bremen 16 b-17s were destroyed the heaviest loss rate to date but for the eighth air force things were about to go from bad to worse on august the 17th american forces plan to attack the ball bearing factories at shrine fort the factories at schweinford produce 52 percent of the total number of anti-friction bearings manufactured in germany this concentration of critical production capacity caused the allied chiefs of staff to assign a top priority to the target the germans of course were determined to defend the place because it was important and so they put every fighter up that they could get a hold of i guess and they did uh they did some real bad damage to the eighth air force that day of the 211 fortresses dispatched on the raid 60 were lost over a quarter of the attacking force the attrition rate in in crewmen on b-17s was extremely high and in the early days your chance of survival is one in three that's a sobering experience to know that you have to fly 25 missions and your chance of survival was just almost nil [Music] by 1943 the u.s eighth air force in britain suffered the highest attrition rate of the war less than a third of b-17 crews were expected to survive at this rate the eighth air force would only last another few weeks something needed to be done and quickly the huge losses suffered by the eighth air force in august 1943 nearly ended the american daylight bombing offensive in europe realizing that its loss rate was unsustainable the army air force halted its offensive to rethink and regroup for the crews of the b-17s it was an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the aircraft and form bonds that would last a lifetime there's ten men in the in the crew uh four officers a pilot and a co-pilot navigator and a bombardier they were officers all the rest were enlisted men each man had his own battle station on the aircraft the navigator and and the bombardier were in the nose of the aircraft and you call through a hatch and then you go up into the pilot's compartment here the pilot co-pilot and flight engineer had their stations quite naturally the pilot co-pilot were real buddies because they had to look at each other side by side and they had to make sure that all of these buttons were punched all of this electric and all this hydraulics was functioning and everything so they were very very close they needed to be and then the engineer when he wasn't manning his turret would stand between the pilot co-pilot and read off air speed indicators and that kind of stuff behind the cockpit in his own room was the radio operator [Music] he had a little space in there it's kind of like a room and he had all his radios and everything set up there further back behind the radio operator the bald turret gunner had a slightly smaller room all of his own well if if you ever open a can of sardines you know how it looks it's all full the ball turret was that way i wouldn't get in that ball turret if they gave me the airplane i don't know how else to put it the guys that got in there i think deserved a medal just for doing it behind the ball in the largest compartment of the fortress the two waste gunners kept up a constant vigil for enemy fighters [Music] and then you had your tail gunner that added up to your 10 people i depend on you you're the pilot you depend on me because i'm a gunner and etc etc each position has a responsibility to the other guys it was a very close-knit little family i mean everybody had to do their job everybody depended upon the other guy to do his job if somebody failed to do his job something could go wrong in picturesque rural england surrounded by friendly civilians the young american airmen of the eighth air force adjusted to life on the front line many would not survive the war but in the tranquil surroundings of the english countryside there were plenty of opportunities to make the most of their tour well to say the least coming from a big city like chicago it was there was like a culture shock of course we had to buy a bicycle the only way we could get around over there and without their help we couldn't even have found a place to buy a bicycle and there was no shortage of american money the shortage was in finding something to buy to spend our money you usually got yourself a bicycle as soon as you got over there and we would ride that seven miles into andel in the evening and uh and hit the pub and have a few pints of mild and bitter or not brown or whatever and fraternize with the brits one of the expressions they used was the only problem with the yanks was they were over sexed and overpaid and over there and we heard this once in a while we were doing the same thing their guys were doing and the kids got close to us because they'd be coming looking for gum chew they're looking for candy because he had no sugar he had nothing like that and we were we're not a heck of a lot older than some of those kids maybe they were six or seven years old and we were 19 or 20 or so we're kind of like their big brothers [Music] a tour of duty in england was 25 missions but with an average life expectancy of just 14 missions for a b-17 crew in the european theater many would not survive we had to fly 25 missions and they told us okay all you have to do is fly 25 mission to go back to state right now we're currently running a four percent attrition rate four times 25 is no go you know but uh that that's how bad it was studies carried out in 1943 show all too clearly that about half of the b-17s lost in combat had left the safety of the formation the conclusion was that a b-17 on its own stood little chance of survival in 1944 efforts were made to revise the standard bomber combat formation and a new 36-plane formation was devised three clusters each consisting of twelve b-17s replaced the existing eighteen strong grouping [Music] flying in a v-shaped echelon the aircraft were packed tightly together in the sky [Music] never before could the mast ranks of the b-17s concentrate firepower with such accuracy and volume but flying so close together provided new dangers when you're flying very tight formation and a plane within the formation let's say got a direct hit and the thing blew up he'd take quite a few other airplanes with it and that did happen what you were supposed to do was to back off a little bit and not fly so close unless you're under fighter attack now if you're on a fighter attack well then you're supposed to really get up there close and get a concentrated fire power in the busy skies over europe accidents could and did happen i looked off to the left and here were two b-17s that had collided and we saw one cut the other one in half and the tail go one way the plane go another way and the other plane go to the right and we looked out saw these fellas falling out of the waist with no the sad thing that happened was that the tail gunner bailed out indeed he did not have his chute hooked to the harness when he bailed out it was a chess chute he just had it in his hand and the slipstream tore away from him so he had 27 000 feet to fall with no no support my thought was he had plenty of time to say his prayers before he hit the end of 1943 the latest model of the b-17 had additional mountings for hand-held machine guns in the cheek of the aircraft and a power-operated turret in the chin this g-model was the last and most extensively produced version of the fortress boasting a total armament of 13 50 caliber machine guns transforming the b-17 from a tough bomber to a true fortress after the disastrous schweinfurt raids in august and september 1943 deep penetration raids into germany were halted the arrival of the p-51 mustang a single-seat long-range fighter meant that the fortresses would at last have the additional protection they so badly needed by december the b-17 was ready for re-entry into european operations now the allies concentrated on delivering a knockout blow to the nazi war machine by february 1944 the army air force was ready to begin its attack against the german aircraft manufacturing industry by destroying the luftwaffe in the factories it would be possible to conduct further strikes against other strategic targets it was to be the biggest bombing missions yet some 3500 aircraft all to bomb within the space of a week that would soon become known as the big week for the crews of the b-17s this big week began much the same as any other [Music] you start in the middle of the night actually to go to the briefing and they'd put a yarn deal across a map up there from our field to where the target was and most of the time it looked like it was going halfway around the world there were certain cities that if if they pull the curtain back at the briefing in the morning you saw the string going to that place why you knew you were in for it [Music] when they pulled that curtain back up there to show you where you were going you should have heard the moaning and groaning from all the crews that were out there listening the cost of the big week was heavy 244 bombers and 33 fighter planes were lost 2 600 men were killed or wounded in just seven days they would live in hell it was bad going in there and coming back that's the most flack i ever saw in one place that was the heaviest the heaviest defense i have ever seen in my life these raids played a crucial role in helping to reduce the overall strength of the luftwaffe paving the way for d-day during the offensive the back of the luftwaffe was broken now the b-17 crews could turn their attention to the most perilous bombing mission of them all berlin [Music] [Applause] hermann goering commander-in-chief of the luftwaffe had claimed that enemy bombs would never fall on berlin and he had good reason to believe it as hitler's capital and the heart of the nazi war machine berlin was the most heavily defended city in all of fortress europe it was ringed by tens of thousands of lethal 88 millimeter anti-aircraft guns and fighters but by early 1944 production of new fighters had all but dried up now the us army air force concentrated on destroying the remnants of the luftwaffe by committing to daylight bombing raids over berlin the us eighth air force would face down the luftwaffe in the skies above the rice capital it would be a decisive battle and a bloody one but if the propaganda value of hitting the german capital in broad daylight was enormous so were the risks and the crews of the b-17s knew that they would be the targets of highly trained german fighter pilots german fighters were a big problem i'll tell you and there were a lot of them and these guys have been flying since 1939 and they had the tactics down perfect they'd come right at you roll over come on out come back up again there was a group of german fighters yellow-nosed fock wolves the abbeville kids we called them those guys were sharp really sharp we hated to see those things get in the air because they were good pounds to make a successful bombing run the b-17s relied on their bombardier and a top-secret device known as the norden bomb site the northern bomb site was a was basically a computer mechanical computer it was a unique piece of equipment it was classified at the time but we had a set of crosshairs in it and my job was to put the crosshairs on the target and keep them on the target now the other factor would be in drifts our wind would affect the drifting of the airplane and my job was to kill the drift and keep making adjustments into our heading to the point where crosshairs would not drift off the target they used to say they could drop them in a pickle barrel from 10 000 feet but that was that was fiction it wasn't that good but they did some very good bombing over berlin the b-17s would have to fly straight and level through the heaviest flak barrage imaginable before the bombardier could release his bombs accurately the bombardier actually flew the airplane on the bomb run the airplane would be put on an automatic pilot and his bomb site would automatically compute the angle that the bomb should drop it would do a very good job of getting the bomb on the target what will drive you up a wall is if whoever that lead bombardier is up there goes over the target and doesn't drop then you make a 360 degree circle around and come back over the target again and you got to go through that same flag all over again and if you could you'd get out there and beat that guy after death nicknamed the big b by the crews of the b-17 the heavies of the eighth air force prepared for a grim attrition fight over berlin for many it would be their last mission of the war on march the 4th 1944 william menses was on his way to berlin and i called the top turk and i says we got fighters coming in he says no no they're ours i could see the contrail they said below them look at them and about that time they opened up i said what the hell you think those are landing lights they're shooting they're shining at us you've become only one person on that old airplane they're all after you that's what i'm saying when they're shooting at you you're in the smallest part of the airplane but that point still bends right between your eyes you know like a nice inverted ice cream cone i saw somebody go out and i got on my intercom find out what was happening and i had no intercom i thought well i better find out what's happening so i left my guns because they weren't doing me too much good and i crawled out of my gun position i crawled through there with my harness on i'd left my parachute to where it was there was one guy laying in the waist his chute was pulled but he wasn't moving so i assumed he was dead it smitty my co-pilot and i could see him down on the bomb bay i don't know if he's getting ready to jump or not and he says you know like that i assumed he said to go well i couldn't go my chute was back in the tail so i turned around i crawled back and i was crawling back in i hooked my harness on something and i backed up i couldn't get off of it i went forward i couldn't get off of it and panic field is set in now i got talking to the man upstairs in a hurry i told him i even go back to church he gets me out of this one when people up front leave and it's time for me to leave i didn't want to be in it if it started to spin i had made up my mind i wasn't going to be in it if i ever hit the ground [Music] william menses parachuted safely away from the aircraft but was captured for him the war was over [Music] on march the 4th 1944 the b-17s pounded a suburb of berlin and two days later revisited the city but this second raid was costly 69 bombers were shot down over the city the largest loss of heavies the eighth air force had suffered on a single raid but the men of the eighth had fought hard 160 german fighters were destroyed and berlin was in flames in the sustained and ruthless bombardment boeing's flying fortresses reduced almost 60 percent of the city to rubble but the crews of the b-17s had little time for remorse our war was up there with the fighters where you know i'm saying i'm not trying to make little of this i'm just saying that's why we looked at it this was our war five miles in the sky down and there we we didn't even i didn't consider that people were dying out of the smoky haze of the battle for berlin emerged an icon of the american air war in europe the b-17 flying fortress with berlin in ruins and the luftwaffe down to a mere token force the b-17s and their crews were given a new target one that would end the war in europe once and for all by early 1944 german oil production the lifeblood of the reich's war machine had remained largely immune to the air war [Music] though the allies had already attempted to knock out the oil production facilities at plesty and romania german synthetic oil supplies continued to be produced at the end of march 1944 when final plans for the allied invasion of europe were being drawn up about 30 percent of the total petroleum available to germany came from the refineries at pelosi and romania at the beginning of 1944 following the systematic destruction of the german aircraft manufacturing industries the strategic bombing target became oil oil and lubricants are the lifeline of any army and the army air force reasoned that by striking oil production sites the enemy could be hampered in its ability to wage war with its oil reserves hitler's war machine could and would fight on as a matter of urgency plans were put in place to smash germany's fuel production once again the b-17 flying fortresses would be in the front line on may the 12th 1944 the american attacks on german oil production began during the month strategic bombers dropped some 5100 tons of bombs on oil targets in august the tonnage skyrocketed to six thousand three hundred tons and in november it reached a climax no less than thirty five thousand tons of heavy-duty explosives were dropped on crucial oil installations but the offensive was taking its toll in the first three months against these oil targets the eighth lost 922 heavies a staggering number another 10 000 men would never make it home the defense of those targets was was immense if i recall there was a something on the order 3 300 anti-aircraft guns around leipzig at the end of the war what happened with the germans is they would pull all their ant aircraft guns back in as they start losing territory so the latter part of the war it wasn't fighters that were your major opposition it was an aircraft because they had the concentration of those guns and those 88's would come right there with us by september german fuel production was down to a quarter of its normal capacity the remnants of the luftwaffe were grounded out of fuel and became target practice for the b-17s escort fighters fighters returning from unchallenged escort missions were ordered to seek targets of opportunity since the enemy did not come up to fight down they went to blast his planes and burn them in his eardrums 500 enemy aircraft were being destroyed each week many of them on the ground by late november 1944 almost the entire might of the eighth air force was directed at destroying german oil facilities leading from the front the b-17 spearheaded what the reich's armaments minister albert speer called the end of german armament production without fuel entire units of the german army were forced to abandon their vehicles for them the game was up berlin was still to be taken but with the allies closing in for the kill the strategic bombing campaign was over the b-17 had done its job by may the 7th 1945 as germany surrendered it had lost 95 percent of its fuel industry its war machine had ground to a halt in just over a thousand days of combat the eighth air force had used up 99 million rounds of ammunition and destroyed 18 810 enemy aircraft of the 1.5 million tons of bombs dropped by all allied aircraft in europe the b-17 flying fortress accounted for almost a third the airplane that had crashed during testing back in 1937 and was almost never built had become a war winner and a legend in combat history 17s came back with some of the most horrible damage you've ever seen almost broken into some of them but they get back and they'd land they could take more punishment i think than any other bomber aircraft well i think it was a wonderful airplane and it took a heck of a lot of beating and if it hadn't been for a b-17 i more likely wouldn't be sitting here talking to you because it could have been any other aircraft now more likely been dead twelve thousand b-17s were built two hundred and fifty thousand men had flown them in europe and more than forty six thousand five hundred american airmen had been killed or wounded the b-17 flying fortress had lived up to its billing despite the losses it had proved itself to be a durable and dependable aircraft one that had extracted a high price in combat helping to end german resistance in the second world war i don't think we could have won it without the b-17 or something by another name that did the same thing that a b-17 did and there was no other plane at the time that could do that everyone that i've known that flew in the b17 was just proudest punch about the unit in its entirety it's a good engine it's a good unit it's a good plane the epitaph if there is one it should be this is the best airplane bomber that ever flew in world war ii my testimony [Music] oh i thought i wanted to be a pilot but my problem was that i was got out of high school and i went to work and uh and uh well i was working in a factory at night and going i worked 11-7 shift and i went to col went to night college in the in the evening from six to ten and i wanted to be a i wanted to be a chemical engineer this was my thoughts i wanted so i took a lot of mathematics and in high school i went through the whole spectrum college algebra trigonometry advanced algebra all that kind of stuff so when i took the test i wanted to be about i think everybody went in wanting to be a pilot and i really when i classified as navigator i didn't have the slightest idea what a navigator was supposed to do on an airplane then there was the bombardiers too but uh i think most of us were happy that we were going to be a officer number one and fly as an emmy and when we were trained i couldn't believe when they told us what we're going to have to do how we can learn that in the period of i think from january until september which was a very short period of time all the stuff but the service did a wonderful job of training and of course we were all very receptive to that i know there are a lot of bum navigators but there are a lot of good navigators too and i think the story is if you're here to talk about it and you got back you must have been a pretty good navigator that's about the way it goes you know well i had three saint christopher's medals because my sister was training she was a navy nurse in world war ii at a catholic hospital and so i had three french nuns praying for me but i also had a rabbit's foot and the priest asked me when they came back which got you back and i said i don't know anybody ready to kill me i guess but i don't know uh they i was i think fliers are all kind of superstitious and friday the 13th i i i don't think i really had an aversion to friday the 13th and i can't remember to this day if i ever flew on friday the 13th but i always said being as young as we were um we were too dumb to feel the fear we were they're too young to feel the fear and it all depends what you wanted to do and we were volunteers on until later in the war and i don't think anybody realized that at the end i went in in 1942 and in the end of 1943 president roosevelt gave an edict that you could not volunteer for the service that you would be drafted and they would put you where they felt you should go and a lot of guys went into the cadets who were drafted because they were qualified to go into that area there but i think being volunteers you know we knew and and we i was in high school in the 30s late 30s and 40s and we were reading the magazines from great britain about the battle of britain and all that and we all knew when we were in high school that we were going to go to war anybody would be kidding themselves if they didn't i thought so and i think all my friends thought so too so we had to decide what if they were going to go to war what were you going to do and i had two uncles my folks came from czechoslovakia in 1912 and my two uncles had already been back we're back in france in 1917 and one was gassed and one was in the artillery but i didn't want to do that i knew that and i didn't want to be on the ground so you just had to make up your mind a lot of guys did a lot of waiters that were drafted i didn't want to be drafted i just went ahead and volunteered very quickly well there again this prior to going overseas in january 1944 our group was they what they did they trained you as provisional groups and you went over singularly flying your airplanes over somewhat over by ship and then you formed you were parceled out to various groups and i think i'm alive today because of other happenings because we were flying over out of tennessee at that time at dyersburg tennessee and in december prior to january of our collision we were flying out of the over the gulf of mexico in a gunnery mission they had p-47s coming at us and the gunners were practicing you know trying to lead them and my mom and dare and i looked off to the left and here were two b-17s that had collided and we saw one cut the other one in half and the tail go one way the plane go another way and the other plane go to the right and we looked out saw these fellas falling out of the waist with no parachutes and to tell you the truth that scared the devils out of so we started shaking and we were really the only plane that got back to our base and maybe a couple others that everything just scattered like a bunch of sheep and we had chest packs we had chest packs and a navigator put his chest pack underneath the desk pilot's head behind his seat or he could have had a backpack on and when i got back i went to air force supply and i said i want a backpack parachute and now that's like i said it could have been it was a message and three weeks later we were flying in a formation then coming back again from we did these gun remissions over the gulf of mexico and we were a lead squad we were called a select crew my pilot was an excellent pilot and so i had transferred off a previous crew onto his crew and we were leaving the formation back from the gulf back to tennessee at about nineteen thousand feet and the crew i had previously on was flying to our left on our left side and for some reason and i will never know why he i think where they were talk practice and change and position he came the plane came underneath us and i think well i'm just saying i'm not a pilot but it must have caught our prop wash and start coming up and i looked down i saw a great big airplane heard a lot of noise and next thing i knew i was out in the air but i had a backpack parachute and the thing as i say about my pilot what saved our life when the planes hit instead of pushing the throttles forward my pilot pushed the throttles back so we went backwards and he went forward and we cut his tail off and he went down and to add color to it's not colored but the the ball turret gunner got out of the ball and came up to the front with a walk-a-round bottle and left his parachute in the back he was there with me we weren't flying a bomb but here that day and he got tossed out too but he got tossed on the wing of the aircraft and the pilot rang the bailout bell looked to his left and here's the guy standing amongst the wreckage and that's a fact and we had an old f model and had the springs on the on the machine gun somehow it caught in his pants the guy standing up there on the wing and he looks out there and the plane was going to the left into a spin and he righted the aircraft in notion to him to start coming the slipstream brought him back and by some way they brought him through the left hand pilot's window with his fur flying suit on i don't know how they got him out well the plane this way i really love the that plane had no nose my engineer said you know the propellers missed you by about eight inches but when the plane went up like this i went sailing back to the firewall and hit the fuse box and cut my back and then when the plane went into a spin i went sailing out of the doggone airplane but i had a parachute and when i went out all i had on was when a parachute opened i had my throat mike i lost my hat i lost my fur boots i did have my gloves on and we're at about 18 or 19 000 feet and when the parachute opened it took all the wind out i thought it was going to die but i kept and it was on a clear day a very very clear day there absolutely no reason why but my pilot brought that plane back without the nose hydraulic systems gone couldn't hardly see the instruments pull the guy through the window the flight engineer was a substitute that day looked at the instruments they were all red light he had a complete nervous breakdown so he had two people on the plane so he radiated the crew and he said i'm going to bring this i got to bring this back i had two guys without shoots in the plane he said you can bail out or i'll bring the plane back and they went with fred heiser and fred brought the damn thing in perfectly they didn't even know it was him and of course the other plane when we cut the tail off it started going down and i actually when i my shoot open all i could see is smoke on the ground i didn't really see the plane going down but two people survived the b-17 when the beast well i saw this in combat when it got shot up it'd go down like a falling leaf just like that and every once in a while to go up like that well centrifugal force is so great in those airplanes you couldn't lift your hand and one shot when it goes like that you could see parachutes coming out of the dog on airplane then it'd go down again to defending and until it hit the ground you know or it broke up or blew up but that made me convinced that a b-17 could take a heck of a lot of punishment because when you saw the thing on the ground you couldn't believe it there was no nose on the airplane but he brought the plane back it had to be a damn tough airplane on that but like i say the only thing happened to me i spent about two and a half months in the hospital because the doctor said don't teach you kids how to bail out of an airplane and i said well he said what'd you do and i said well i don't know what i did but i pulled my rip car too soon i guess i was going about like a bomb maybe 180 200 miles an hour so when the thing opened it tore my shoulder all up and other than that and they wired me back together and i went overseas with about three months later with another crew but without your back well without the fact well that well i say the sign was when we saw the other planes collide and saw those people falling out without parachutes convinced me and my car's my crew kidding me then for about two or three weeks you know what are you wearing that doggone parachute like that i said well say what you want to do but i'm going to wear their parachute like that and it saved my life because i wouldn't had a shot in combat we wore chest packs but i had a parachute cord from a parachute i went to supply and tied it on my harness and tied it on the parachute thing so if it did occur i'd be able to get the thing in and snap it on me but after that i mean you get a little goosey to say the least about how you're going to get out of that airplane but it really wouldn't bother me if i had had a bailout again of course i didn't bail out i got tossed down i would have done it

Channel: WAR - HISTORY - DOCUMENTARIES

Views: 727,849

Rating: 4.787395 out of 5

Keywords: History of wars, world war, battleship, war history, Battlefield, B17, b 17 plane, b-17 bomber, bomber b 17, ww2 b 17 movie, b 17 flying fortress, b 17 flying fortress crash, flying fortress, flying fortress footage, military, bomber, b17, Boeing B-17

Id: LTFy9mzjl0o

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019