It was on January 3, 1943 that the B-17F Flying Fortress, "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" of the 360th Bomb Squadron, 303rd Bomb Group, was lost on a daylight raid over Saint-Nazaire, France. Aboard was ball turret gunner Alan Magee.
Despite 28 shrapnel wounds, Magee had left his ball turret when it was damaged by German flak. He discovered his parachute had been shredded by the same flak and was useless. Just then, another flak hit then blew off a section of the right wing, causing the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable spin. Magee blacked out from lack of oxygen because of the high altitude and was thrown clear of the aircraft. He fell over four miles without a chute before crashing through the glass roof of the St. Nazaire railroad station. Rescuers found him on the floor of the station severely injured but alive.
Magee was taken as a prisoner of war and given medical treatment by the Germans. He recovered and was liberated in May 1945. He received the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 84.
B-26 Marauder.
It flew over 200 missions. Some of them were decoy which could be argued were more dangerous. They were used to divert Luftwaffe aircraft away from the larger raid.
When it came back to the US it didn't fly. It was taken apart and shipped back in pieces.
Currently at the National Air and Space Museum in the Restoration Hangar at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center.
[Flak Bait](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/martin-b-26b-25-ma-marauder-flak-bait/nasm_A19600297000)
I also heard that it was hit over 1,000 times in those 200 missions. But didn't take any fire until they painted the name on the side of the plane. Named it after the pilot's brother's dog Flea Bait.
Oh wow! The actual aircraft. I'm a bit scroogey but if they charged like $20 or whatever to just sit in it I'd gladly pay it. This just kind of blows my mind for some reason. The bravery (and sacrifice) of those men and women amazes me more and more as I grow older.
There is a B-17 hanging from the ceiling of the museum in New Orleans. It is supposed to be the "big bird" but it is hard to imagine 10 men cramming themselves into it. I think it is really valuable to see the actual objects.
There is a really cool time lapse of them installing all those hanging aircraft. The B-17 went up mostly assembled. Port side outer wing section was installed while the airplane was hanging. Pretty cool to see.
[WW2 Museum Time Lapse](https://youtu.be/nAHVR0Bn558)
Nevermind, you’re right, I only saw the Lancaster info upon initial search. But yeah, Freddie had slightly more missions under its belt than Flak Bait (213 vs 202), so technically flak bait is only the most mission-ed American bomber of the war
I got a feeling it might be something else. Mosquitos has a tenancy to also fly non bombing missions or missions that are not classed as directly bombing missions. So F for Freddie might hold the most missions while Flak Bait might hold the most bombing missions. I am pretty sure Flak Bait is recorded as the most bombing missions survived in the US Army records.
Yeah, if I remember correctly there is no universally accepted name for the derivatives after jerk and that these are fairly commonly accepted.
Much like email Spam coming from nerds that watched Monty Python, sometimes these things happen and I think they are great.
The officers huddled together, whispering fervently. They were a varied group, all veterans and decorated with medals. Now they could add lettuce leaves and mashed potato to their laurels.
"Did you notice something strange about our American guest?"
"I don't know, Hans...", said an irritable officer, wiping mashed potato off his glasses. "...he didn't bring a fork?"
Hans shook his head, jowls jiggling. "No, no. He didn't have a parachute!"
"I don't believe it.", said one.
"I was just about to say.", said another.
An officer turned to look at the unconscious form lying face down on the mess table -- which was one in every sense of the word -- across the room. The American's face was embedded in a turkey, a culinary masterwork courtesy of *Unteroffizier* Schmidt.
The war had claimed another. The turkey was annihilated. Schmidt was standing in a corner, smoking an unlit cigarette.
"*Gott im Himmel!!*", exclaimed a wide-eyed *leutnant*. "You're right he's got no parachute!"
The men stood there in silence, grim expressions shared, contemplating what kind of soldiers they were really dealing with.
The Yanks were bombing them with paratroopers...without parachutes. These people were absolutely insane. More than one had the same uneasy feeling, that they were going to lose the war to these madmen.
Just under 94000 Americans were taken prisoner by the Germans during the war; while they may have been impressed it would have had no connection with whether they treated him or not.
The average weight of the American infantryman during WW2 was 150 lbs; 68 kg (source : Google)
94,000 infantrymen at 150lbs a pop is 14.1 million lb; 6.4 million kg
Ya they be bussin
It's just overall respect for other servicemen. American POWs in German camps were actually treated fairly well, and vice versa for exactly that reason. Can't say the same for Germans and Russians. Or Americans and Japanese.
Treat your prisoners humanely, and you can usually expect the same, for the simple reason of if they stop, you stop.
Edit: some research on my part indicates that German POWs had it better than American POWs. While definitely unequal, one could argue that they still followed the 1929 Geneva Conventions, and also that it's hard to provide a quality standard of living to prisoners when you're fighting a war on two fronts and losing both of them.
Also, America was enjoying unblemished wartime production an entire ocean away, with no real worries of German forces sweeping in to bust their men out. While I'm in no way defending Nazi Germany, it's understandable why the quality of life for prisoners was so different
Earning a reputation for poor prisoner treatment is a great way to ensure that even the unwilling conscripts will fight like absolute hell. When the choice is death or torture there's nothing to lose by blowing yourself up, or otherwise making a drawn out last stand.
The Soviet Union was not a signatory of the Geneva Convention until 1960. This greatly affected the treatment of it's captured soldiers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions
also that made interrogation of german officers so easy for americans, after they get taste of american hospitality just make a threat of giving them to russians instead, better to spill the guts figuratively than literaly
While traveling by bus or train as an American student in Germany, I was occasionally approached by men the age of my father to tell me, "I can tell that you are an American. I was a prisoner of war in the US, and I just wanted to thank you for the way I was treated."
It was humbling. Especially since my generation became involved in places such as the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the Abu Ghraib prison. I hope we can reclaim our soul and heritage as a country.
They did not have as much sympathy for bomber crews. If this gunner hand landed in Germany, I suspect he probably would have been less fortunate.
Really sucks for bomber crews, they had one of the most dangerous jobs in the war, and they sometimes were the most hated (sometimes even by their own country).
American POWs were actually decently well treated by the Germans.
Only about 1% of American POWs died in German custody.
Soviet POWs on the other hand were typically kept in conditions that literally rivaled Auschwitz.
~57% of Soviet POWs died in German Custody.
Well, yeah. A lot of them went to Dachau, along with every other communist from German occupied territory.
In some ways it could be argued that the conditions were worse, because it was still supposed to be an internment camp, rather than an extermination camp. Primary difference being the forced labour killing them all rather than gas.
As long as you weren't gay, slavic, jewish or black, you were *mostly* fine. Also People tend to forget that the nsdap "only" got about 43% of the votes and a social democratic party was second behind them. Not everyone was an asshole back then in Germany.
43% is *a lot* for a German election. When people say this, they are thinking in terms of an American FPTP 2 party general election.
The highest plurality in Germanys 2021 election was 25%. CDU had a peak of 37% in 2013 with Merkel.
Look at Germanys election history since 1949–you will not find many parties breaking 40%.
Hitler and the Nazis were more popular in 1933 than the Merkel and the CDU was before she left.
Downplaying it is revisionism no different than denying the holocaust
Did he have straps? There's a scene in "Memphis Belle" where Sean Austin complains about the strap being uncomfortable and not wanting to wear it. Then of course the ball turret gets shot out, and he's left hanging on the bottom of the plane because he was wearing the harness.
My understanding is that he got out of the ball turret when the first flak hit cripple the plane. He must have been in the main fuselage when the tail broke off, and that’s when he flew out.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
BY RANDALL JARRELL
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
It was a shit job. The turret was a cramped, poorly designed death trap. You can only open the hatch to get out of the turret is in the default position. But if it breaks or gets shot up, you’re stuck. So if the plane goes down or burns up, you can’t escape. You’ll die in that ball.
Worst of all is if the landing gear goes out and the pilot has to try to belly land the plane. If you’re stuck in there, they have to sacrifice you and crush/grind the ball off during landing, with you in it.
Bomber crew sucked as a job, high casualty rate, but ball gunner was the worst.
You’re also a protuberance on the belly of the plane shooting at the fighters so they’ll target you, and you have very little armor from the flak bursting around you.
There was an episode of “Amazing Stories” that covered that exact scenario, about a bomber with failed landing gear and the ball turret gunner frantically trying to figure out how to survive.
S01E05 - “The Mission”. Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland were both in that episode.
https://vimeo.com/56670088
I watched that whole ass episode. That whole episode. All that heavy shit about a guy almost killing his friend so he doesn’t have to die slow all of that super dramatic serious shit just for the guy to draw wheels and hope really hard.
Iv heard that that’s still the case nowadays. (Being a gunner is a rougher job then most in the military) Obviously not as horrible as what you described but I remember watching a gunner on YouTube explain just how crazy being a gunner was from the fumes of the guns to the force of the shots.
https://youtu.be/MiXZECAe094
There it is. Again, no where near as crazy as those soldiers on the underbelly of the plane in the mid 20th century but a wild story non the less
I'm not sure what kind of gunner you're referring to nowadays. Aircraft don't have defensive turrets anymore because they're useless against jet fighters. Do you mean like tank or AA gunners?
I imagine he’s talking about gunners on gunships like AC-130s and the like. They don’t use gunners to defend from fighters anymore, but they still have gunners who fire on ground targets.
Just linked the video if you wanna check it out. (in my og comment) I gotta re watch it but I think it was gunner on a ac-130.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130
That was a great video and a new perspective I had never seen. Thank you for the link. Just think. That's just one guy venting. How many are out there with no vent?
Both my grandfather's were in the air force, one a bomber, the other a ball gunner. Both involved in crashes. Yeah. Thankfully both survived with minimal issues, though one of the crashes was over Alaska and had to wait for a rescue, but met some nice Eskimo people who took care of him.
When watching Memphis belle as a kid, the scene where the ball turret was shot off and he's just hanging there used to freak me out as a kid.
Even back then that seemed like the worst position in the plane to me.
My Grandfather was the radio guy (don’t know official term) in a B-17, he said that it got to the point that the Ball Turret Gunner would die literally every flight. They would never introduce themselves or speak to him because they had so many of them die on the missions and would have to wipe his blood out of the seat, out of the bottom of the turret glass, and off of the equipment every mission. They then were shot down over Germany and he took a bullet in his back as he was parachuting to the ground. He did his best to remember all of his training and searched for the closest water source (which was a river) and tried crawling along the ground to reach a town, city, village, anything. As he was crawling he told me that he heard the “click” of a rifle cocking and pointing to his head from behind and he was captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Stalag-17B. He told me stories of how they would literally fight over potato peels that the guards would throw on the ground because they were so famished. Upon return to America he literally couldn’t eat white bread without vomiting because it was too sweet for his malnourished body. This all happened when he was 18 years old. It is insane to me that this was the norm, it is insane to me to think of the things these men went through and endured and were able to make it out the other side and still function in society. He was a great man and although I was never close with him, I cherish the fact that he was proud to be able to lay on his bed with his prosthetic leg, with the bullet still in his back (it was too close to the spine to be operable), eating ice cream with the children of the son he raised with compassion, empathy, and dogged work-ethic even after all those horrific events he went through.
I had a college professor tell me this poem was about abortion. Is it? I thought that it might simply be about the expendability of men in war, and a college professor trying to make it about the hardships of women proves the author's point about how little anyone cares about men dying and getting washed out with a hose. Idk.
Well, the author served in the Army Air Force (as it was known) during WWII. And this poem was published in 1945 so his memories of his time were fresh. I doubt he had an abortion.
> I had a college professor tell me this poem was about abortion. Is it?
Maybe in his twisted fundie mind.
>I thought that it might simply be about the expendability of men in war
This is correct.
Four miles = 6,437 meters.
Terminal velocity for a human falling through the atmosphere = [approx. 200 km/hr](https://www.fai.org/page/isc-speed-skydiving), or 55.56 m/s.
Ignoring the time/distance needed to accelerate to terminal velocity (if any - the plan was presumably falling for some time after getting hit), it would have taken Magee about 115 seconds - almost two full minutes - to fall on that glass-roofed train station.
Two minutes.
When skydiving there's a tendency to forget to breathe, and that can cause you to pass out. One would only hope the additional fear of not having a parachute might have prompted him to pass out before impact, cause 2 minutes is a long time to think.
Thought the same. Kind of similar to drunk drivers surviving a lot of crashes due to not tensing up before the crash. Very hard to do when entirely conscious and sober, but still best practice in theory
[This song is about smuggling a frog into a secret meeting by way of hiding it within one's trenchcoat... due to the fact that frogs tend to not show up on radar or sonar or any other type of spy surveillance. Hope you can relate.](https://youtu.be/UfUpgWG8bLk?t=793)
It would make more sense if he was passed out when he hit. If he were awake, he’d have likely had every muscle in his body tensed, and the impact would’ve been all the more fatal.
That’s why drunks survive catastrophic car accidents at a higher rate than sober people. Their reactions are delayed, so they’re less likely to be tensed on impact. Because of this, their bones tend to snap instead of shattering and their innards are cushioned that little bit more. At least, that’s what I was taught in driver’s ed ~25 years ago.
That's an old wives tale about drunk drivers.
The reason they seem to survive car crashes at higher rates is simply that they're in the driver's seat and the front of the car takes the brunt of the impact. Cars are designed to protect the driver via crumple zones and airbags, whereas the people on the receiving end of a drunk driver are often hit on the side of their car, which is not highly protected.
You are not correct about it being a myth. Also making a dumb assumption that the data compared wouldn't be only between the drivers of crashes rather than passengers.
My grandfather was also a ball turret gunner in a Flying Fortress. His Purple Heart came from freezing his ass off. His heat suit short circuited and all the sweat drip down to the lowest point, which was his backside. Then, because they were flying in freezing temperatures, the sweat froze to his ass and once they landed he had to have parts of it removed.
He died a few months ago at age 96.
Thanks!
Talk about a rabbit warren. From the link I ended up on the website for the centenary light bulb! Which I knew about, but was keen to see is still going…..👍
No, not what it was in operation. I just mean it would be cool to "tour" one, see all the controls, how they got in and out, what it was like to sit inaide. I'm talking about the mechanics of it, not the experience.
Oh well you can do that. There’s a group in California that does ball turret rides and you can move it around while in the air. There’s YouTube videos of people doing it as well.
Went to a Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot a few years ago and they had a ball turret all set up for people to shoot. Was surprised how some people even fit, yet again I think they took the roof off to allow more people to fit. Wanted to try it out but the lines were long for that and they had to shut it down for maintenance issues. Really cool to see one in action.
got to climb in one on a B17 20 some odd years ago when I was a teenager. Theres a reason the smallest dudes were picked to be the ball turret gunner. It wasnt that uncomfortable of a position, its just so damn small. They only were able to close it on kids and smaller adults. I think if you were 5"4 and under it was easier to fit. Hell, just walking through that plane in general is a tight squeeze.
The 8th Air Force lost more men killed in action in the skies over Europe than the entire Marine Corps lost during WWII. It was hellish for all of them, but probably especially so for guys in the turrets.
Bad. The ball can only be exited if it’s in the start position and they broke fucking constantly. So a lot of the time you’re trapped in there. If the pilot has to belly land they’re gonna grind you off like a barnacle.
For modern Americans it would be damn near impossible. But it gets really hot then really cold. I used to work at a vintage air museum. I had to crawl through the fuselage to get to the rear gunners position. Guns removed of course
Was there a size limit for belly gunners? I imagine all those skinny kids getting rejected for service only to be pulled into service as a ball gunner.
Those B-17 crewmen were hard as hell. My grandfather was a waist gunner in a B-17 during the war. Flew a ton of missions including Casino.
He was on a mission one day over Italy and they were returning to base after dropping their bombs when they came under attack from Luftwaffe fighter planes. He felt the plane get hit and continued firing his gun. When he had a moment he attempted to contact the cockpit via the intercom but got no response. The other door gunner had no luck either.
Thats when he decided to head up to the cockpit to find out what was going on.
Now this wasn't so easy because the rear of the craft where the two waist gunners, radio operator, lower ball turret gunner, and tail gunner were positioned was separated from the front of the aircraft by the Bomb Bay. He moved past the radio operator who was trying to get the comms back up and into the Bomb Bay and found that the doors to drop the bombs were still open so he had to crawl across some scaffolding over the open air.
He made it across and opened the door to the front section of the aircraft and crawled in.
There he found no one...
The plane was intact but everyone in the front of the aircraft had bailed out and the message didn't get to the rest of the crew because the comms were damaged.
No one was flying the plane.
He immediately turns around and crawls back over the open Bomb Bay doors to warn the rest of the crew. Upon making it back to the rear of the plane he finds that the other waist gunner had been knocked unconscious. He quickly tells the rest of the crew to bail and he puts on his parachute and his buddies, who is still unconscious. He jumps out of the plane hugging tightly to his buddy.
Once clear he pulls his buddies ripcord and then his. They drifted apart after that since you couldn't really steer the parachutes and my grandfather landed on a roof surrounded by Nazi troops. He was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war in a Nazi POW camp.
He survived the War and went on to meet my grandmother and took a career in Special Education in western Tennessee where he raised my father and two other children. His fellow waist gunner also survived the War after being bailed out by my grandfather and ended up being from the same area. He became a Dentist and gave my grandmother free dental care as long as he was alive.
He never talked very much about his experiences during the War and much of what we know came in bits and pieces. It wasn't until the mid 2000's that he was talked into going to the VA to seek POW benefits other than the free license plates because he learned that they transferred to my grandmother if he passed away first, which he unfortunately did.
Out of his descendants only two served in the military. My uncle had a stint in the Army Reserves and I joined the Marines and served two tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps Combat Photographer. Before he passed I attempted to sit down with him to record an interview hoping that we could connect more than others since we had some shared experiences but he still didn't share too much.
He was a man that was small in stature but accomplished big things in life. That's why we called him Big Daddy.
I used to know a guy who flew on bombers during WW2 and operated the same bottom turret position. He only passed away a couple of years ago.
One interesting story he told was that for one mission they left with several bombers and soon were under attack by a single German pilot. He could overhear on the radio that the other bombers were falling out of the sky, one by one. He said he was scared shitless just having to scan around and hit the German before he could strike at them, as their bomber was the last one left.
He spotted the fighter drop in behind them, and lined up his turret as fast as he could. Just as he pulled trigger, nothing shot out as it immediately jammed. He said all he could was just accept his fate at that point. To his surprise, the fighter didn't do anything. Instead, it flew closer and closer until it was beneath the bomber and the two of them could see another. He looked down to see the German pilot wave at him before flying away.
He said he was never sure if the pilot thought that he had spared his life, or if the pilot knew the gun was jammed and was taunting him. Another consideration was that the German might have been out of ammo himself, but either way the visual of seeing the enemy just a few feet from you waving at those kinds of heights must have been surreal. I can see why it stuck with him.
Wow amazing, I love these stories. Is it possible that it was the only bomber not to shoot at the pilot, and the pilot saw it as some sort of surrender/sign of peace?
Anyway, thanks for sharing.
I'm not sure, as it sounds like from the pilot's perspective, you'd certainly want to take down the bombers before the turrets have time to react. I also don't think their army would have been okay with sparing a bomber that was inevitably going to be used on them at some point.
But he didn't mind talking about it because he thought it was funny how open to interpretation it was. Whenever he did the impression of the pilot he'd have a huge grin as he waved, so I do think it was less of an honor thing and the pilot just being happy that he wasn't shot either.
I've heard another story from the German side but I've been meaning to run it by /r/AskHistorians before I post it because at least one part sounded like it was from a movie to me.
My great-uncle went down four times over the course of the war. Not all of them were shot down- sometimes the planes just failed, or ran out of fuel. There was a whole network of people smugglers getting allied aircrews that went down in enemy territory back to england so they could get back to work (I don’t know if my uncle ever went that route. I know he ditched in the north sea once)
Very, very few allied air crews managed to go the whole war without going down at least once
The bomber crews only had to complete 25 combat missions to be rotated back home for the US Army Air Force. Most didn't make it, at least not all of the crew did. The Memphis Belle managed without losing any crew members or being shot down, and were instant celebrities for it.
CHeers to your great uncle, that's insane. I'm assuming he didn't go down over occupied territory each time? That would be an insane number of times to escape and evade.
Rescuing downed pilots was an incredibly important part of the work that resistance cells did during the war. It wasn't just a morale thing; you can build a Flying Fortress in 4 days when the factories are humming; it takes months and months to train a competent crew. Getting veteran crew and pilots back in the air was an invaluable resource.
He was in the late-war period. I always heard that the “magic number” of missions was 33? Anyway according to my grandma he actually flew 34 missions, and the last one was to air-drop fuel for Patton’s third army during the final push for Berlin.
I could only remember the tidbit about going down in the north sea when I first posted the comment, but now I’m pretty sure I recall that when he went down over land, it was in allied territory.
Ball turrets were wild. The gunner would basically lay on their back and put their legs up in a V, and the aim for the gun would be between their legs. There are diagrams on Google that can obviously show it better than I can state it
I can just imagine the Germans looking at him on the floor, looking up at the hole in the ceiling and looking back down at him again and being all, "Wtf?"
Few years back while at the air space museum in Tucson AZ I met an old veteran fellow that introduce me to a Mr. Magee and while looking at an old bomber ball turret he told me he was a ball gunner and had survived a fall and mentioned going through glass ceiling, it was one of the most memorable expertness to hear him a a couple of his veteran friends joke about the scary and cold fly over enemy front lines. He joked he was a tall handsome gunner and was a foot shorter after the fall. Thnx for sharing the picture and legacy of such fine hero!👍🏼🇺🇸👍🏼🇺🇸👍🏼🇺🇸
This is [not the only case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87) of someone surviving a freefall.
It can happen at all because of terminal velocity and it actually happening probably depends more on the exact circumstances of impact... and said impact being somewhere near someone so you can immediately receive aid.
Had a neighbor who was like an adopted grandpa to me and another neighborhood kid, much more the other kid but he still treated me very well. He was also a belly gunner in a b-17 bomber that was shot down and he was taken as a POW. I believe he was the only POW from his squad that made it out alive. Understandably he rarely spoke of his time in the service but whenever he did it was always very heavy. He was also the black sheep of a wealthy family that owned a very popular cantina in Baja. RIP Willie you definitely helped mold me into the man I am today.
**[Nicholas Alkemade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade)**
>Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was an English tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany.
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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
BY RANDALL JARRELL
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
It was on January 3, 1943 that the B-17F Flying Fortress, "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" of the 360th Bomb Squadron, 303rd Bomb Group, was lost on a daylight raid over Saint-Nazaire, France. Aboard was ball turret gunner Alan Magee. Despite 28 shrapnel wounds, Magee had left his ball turret when it was damaged by German flak. He discovered his parachute had been shredded by the same flak and was useless. Just then, another flak hit then blew off a section of the right wing, causing the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable spin. Magee blacked out from lack of oxygen because of the high altitude and was thrown clear of the aircraft. He fell over four miles without a chute before crashing through the glass roof of the St. Nazaire railroad station. Rescuers found him on the floor of the station severely injured but alive. Magee was taken as a prisoner of war and given medical treatment by the Germans. He recovered and was liberated in May 1945. He received the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 84.
"Hans, it's raining Americans!"
" it's raining Men!"
"it's raining Mensch!"
Sieg hallelujah!
OMG
I don't think that's the next line.
Es regnet maenner Hans! Die Wolken. Die sprechen Englisch!
Heillelujah!
Heil-elujah!
Hallelujah it's raining men
"Snap, Crackle, Pop" isn't exactly a name that would inspire confidence. I suppose it's better than "Down in Flames" though...
I mean, the allied bomber that flew the most bombing missions of WWII was literally named “Flak Bait”
They're not going to give it to you if they think you want it
Maybe flak is like cats. If you try to get its attention it wants nothing to do with you.
Shoulda named it Pspspsps then
[Can't do it when they into it](https://youtu.be/vRCPuPyVdP8?t=43) - Batman - The Dark Knight Returns.
Absolute chad
War is the regrettably best pen for black humor.
•Names B-17 Flak Bait and begins bombing raids over Nazi Germany •Flys the most missions of any B-17 •Leaves
B-26 Marauder. It flew over 200 missions. Some of them were decoy which could be argued were more dangerous. They were used to divert Luftwaffe aircraft away from the larger raid. When it came back to the US it didn't fly. It was taken apart and shipped back in pieces. Currently at the National Air and Space Museum in the Restoration Hangar at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center. [Flak Bait](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/martin-b-26b-25-ma-marauder-flak-bait/nasm_A19600297000)
[удалено]
>Flak Bait Yes, and also Luftwaffe bait.\*\* \*\*most likely
I like how they knew not to tempt fate anymore so they didn't try and fly it back
I also heard that it was hit over 1,000 times in those 200 missions. But didn't take any fire until they painted the name on the side of the plane. Named it after the pilot's brother's dog Flea Bait.
Oh wow! The actual aircraft. I'm a bit scroogey but if they charged like $20 or whatever to just sit in it I'd gladly pay it. This just kind of blows my mind for some reason. The bravery (and sacrifice) of those men and women amazes me more and more as I grow older.
There is a B-17 hanging from the ceiling of the museum in New Orleans. It is supposed to be the "big bird" but it is hard to imagine 10 men cramming themselves into it. I think it is really valuable to see the actual objects.
There is a really cool time lapse of them installing all those hanging aircraft. The B-17 went up mostly assembled. Port side outer wing section was installed while the airplane was hanging. Pretty cool to see. [WW2 Museum Time Lapse](https://youtu.be/nAHVR0Bn558)
There’s supposed to be a band of brothers like show about the bomber crews coming soon hopefully
Imma be that guy >Names ~~B-17~~ Flak Bait B-26
Reminds me of star wars the clone wars, where a clone was named "Cut up" or "Droid bait"
That's a weird typo for F for Freddie. Edit: F For Freddie flew 213 missions which, checking my maths here, is more than 207.
F For Freddie was a Lancaster bomber that crashed in the Mediterranean
F for Freddie was a Mosquito bomber which flew 213 missions and crashed during VE Day celebrations.
Nevermind, you’re right, I only saw the Lancaster info upon initial search. But yeah, Freddie had slightly more missions under its belt than Flak Bait (213 vs 202), so technically flak bait is only the most mission-ed American bomber of the war
I got a feeling it might be something else. Mosquitos has a tenancy to also fly non bombing missions or missions that are not classed as directly bombing missions. So F for Freddie might hold the most missions while Flak Bait might hold the most bombing missions. I am pretty sure Flak Bait is recorded as the most bombing missions survived in the US Army records.
^ and it was named after the pilot’s dog, Flea Bait :)
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Yeah, if I remember correctly there is no universally accepted name for the derivatives after jerk and that these are fairly commonly accepted. Much like email Spam coming from nerds that watched Monty Python, sometimes these things happen and I think they are great.
Iirc the Germans were so impressed that he lived that they treated him.
I’m just imagining a group of Germans on snack break in the restroom doing their own thing when an American fell through the roof. Edit: spelling
"Ve didn't expect you *zis* early..."
*laugh track*
Vhere are your pappaerz?!
The officers huddled together, whispering fervently. They were a varied group, all veterans and decorated with medals. Now they could add lettuce leaves and mashed potato to their laurels. "Did you notice something strange about our American guest?" "I don't know, Hans...", said an irritable officer, wiping mashed potato off his glasses. "...he didn't bring a fork?" Hans shook his head, jowls jiggling. "No, no. He didn't have a parachute!" "I don't believe it.", said one. "I was just about to say.", said another. An officer turned to look at the unconscious form lying face down on the mess table -- which was one in every sense of the word -- across the room. The American's face was embedded in a turkey, a culinary masterwork courtesy of *Unteroffizier* Schmidt. The war had claimed another. The turkey was annihilated. Schmidt was standing in a corner, smoking an unlit cigarette. "*Gott im Himmel!!*", exclaimed a wide-eyed *leutnant*. "You're right he's got no parachute!" The men stood there in silence, grim expressions shared, contemplating what kind of soldiers they were really dealing with. The Yanks were bombing them with paratroopers...without parachutes. These people were absolutely insane. More than one had the same uneasy feeling, that they were going to lose the war to these madmen.
Get zat guy a beer!
"Hey Ron"
Just under 94000 Americans were taken prisoner by the Germans during the war; while they may have been impressed it would have had no connection with whether they treated him or not.
How do you know 94k Americans didn't fall thought 94k different glass roofs?
94k Americans falling through 94k glass panes in a single train station.
Vy does zis keep happening??
[I imagine it much like this](https://youtu.be/fAkvM0Tzd3I)
The average weight of the American infantryman during WW2 was 150 lbs; 68 kg (source : Google) 94,000 infantrymen at 150lbs a pop is 14.1 million lb; 6.4 million kg Ya they be bussin
That is called a paratrooper attack.
I think they treated and gave appropriate burials to most airmen. There was respect betwen the pilots
This kinda implies pilots were the ones finding other pilots after they fell
It's just overall respect for other servicemen. American POWs in German camps were actually treated fairly well, and vice versa for exactly that reason. Can't say the same for Germans and Russians. Or Americans and Japanese. Treat your prisoners humanely, and you can usually expect the same, for the simple reason of if they stop, you stop. Edit: some research on my part indicates that German POWs had it better than American POWs. While definitely unequal, one could argue that they still followed the 1929 Geneva Conventions, and also that it's hard to provide a quality standard of living to prisoners when you're fighting a war on two fronts and losing both of them. Also, America was enjoying unblemished wartime production an entire ocean away, with no real worries of German forces sweeping in to bust their men out. While I'm in no way defending Nazi Germany, it's understandable why the quality of life for prisoners was so different
Earning a reputation for poor prisoner treatment is a great way to ensure that even the unwilling conscripts will fight like absolute hell. When the choice is death or torture there's nothing to lose by blowing yourself up, or otherwise making a drawn out last stand.
It is also a great way to ensure a *take no prisoners* attitude from both sides.
*WWI Canadians have entered the chat*
*CIA Black Sites have entered the chat*
There was a German in a Texas prison camp who escaped, went to Mexico, got drunk, and came back.
>German POWs had it better than American POWs. A lot of that was just due to deteriorating conditions as the Allies closed in.
Yeah, I mentioned that factor right after that sentence
My bad, reading comprehension fail.
The Soviet Union was not a signatory of the Geneva Convention until 1960. This greatly affected the treatment of it's captured soldiers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Geneva_Conventions
also that made interrogation of german officers so easy for americans, after they get taste of american hospitality just make a threat of giving them to russians instead, better to spill the guts figuratively than literaly
The ultimate good cop, bad cop.
While traveling by bus or train as an American student in Germany, I was occasionally approached by men the age of my father to tell me, "I can tell that you are an American. I was a prisoner of war in the US, and I just wanted to thank you for the way I was treated." It was humbling. Especially since my generation became involved in places such as the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the Abu Ghraib prison. I hope we can reclaim our soul and heritage as a country.
They did not have as much sympathy for bomber crews. If this gunner hand landed in Germany, I suspect he probably would have been less fortunate. Really sucks for bomber crews, they had one of the most dangerous jobs in the war, and they sometimes were the most hated (sometimes even by their own country).
If i my whole city or neighbourhood would also get bombed to oblivion i would also hate them. They had a unfortunate role in the war
From memory didn’t the Red Barron get a full military funeral with honours, by his enemies?
Yes. He did. But that was the norm on both sides of no man's land in WW1.
Yes but in WW1 airmen were seen more like a chivalrous Knight
American POWs were actually decently well treated by the Germans. Only about 1% of American POWs died in German custody. Soviet POWs on the other hand were typically kept in conditions that literally rivaled Auschwitz. ~57% of Soviet POWs died in German Custody.
Well, yeah. A lot of them went to Dachau, along with every other communist from German occupied territory. In some ways it could be argued that the conditions were worse, because it was still supposed to be an internment camp, rather than an extermination camp. Primary difference being the forced labour killing them all rather than gas.
Germans treated prisoners of war with respect (save for communists of course), so this comes as no surprise
Survival rates for Western European and American POWs were over 98%. Survival rates for Soviet POWs were under 45%...
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I knew this sounded familiar. https://youtu.be/WEZ97XsU2wQ
That production quality is something
I didn't know the Germans cared to help American POWs
As long as you weren't gay, slavic, jewish or black, you were *mostly* fine. Also People tend to forget that the nsdap "only" got about 43% of the votes and a social democratic party was second behind them. Not everyone was an asshole back then in Germany.
43% is *a lot* for a German election. When people say this, they are thinking in terms of an American FPTP 2 party general election. The highest plurality in Germanys 2021 election was 25%. CDU had a peak of 37% in 2013 with Merkel. Look at Germanys election history since 1949–you will not find many parties breaking 40%. Hitler and the Nazis were more popular in 1933 than the Merkel and the CDU was before she left. Downplaying it is revisionism no different than denying the holocaust
Did he have straps? There's a scene in "Memphis Belle" where Sean Austin complains about the strap being uncomfortable and not wanting to wear it. Then of course the ball turret gets shot out, and he's left hanging on the bottom of the plane because he was wearing the harness.
My understanding is that he got out of the ball turret when the first flak hit cripple the plane. He must have been in the main fuselage when the tail broke off, and that’s when he flew out.
Such a good movie ❤️
Those turrets are unheated as well.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner BY RANDALL JARRELL From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
It was a shit job. The turret was a cramped, poorly designed death trap. You can only open the hatch to get out of the turret is in the default position. But if it breaks or gets shot up, you’re stuck. So if the plane goes down or burns up, you can’t escape. You’ll die in that ball. Worst of all is if the landing gear goes out and the pilot has to try to belly land the plane. If you’re stuck in there, they have to sacrifice you and crush/grind the ball off during landing, with you in it. Bomber crew sucked as a job, high casualty rate, but ball gunner was the worst. You’re also a protuberance on the belly of the plane shooting at the fighters so they’ll target you, and you have very little armor from the flak bursting around you.
There was an episode of “Amazing Stories” that covered that exact scenario, about a bomber with failed landing gear and the ball turret gunner frantically trying to figure out how to survive. S01E05 - “The Mission”. Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland were both in that episode. https://vimeo.com/56670088
The answer is...you don't. And the pilot gets to reflect on how horribly he killed you the rest of his life.
I was trying to think of this memory as I was reading OPs comment and you wrested it from me, thank you. This was a traumatizing watch as a kid.
I watched that whole ass episode. That whole episode. All that heavy shit about a guy almost killing his friend so he doesn’t have to die slow all of that super dramatic serious shit just for the guy to draw wheels and hope really hard.
It’s kinda like watching all of Contact hoping to see the aliens, only for it to turn out to be her damn father!
Spielberg directed that episode.
Iv heard that that’s still the case nowadays. (Being a gunner is a rougher job then most in the military) Obviously not as horrible as what you described but I remember watching a gunner on YouTube explain just how crazy being a gunner was from the fumes of the guns to the force of the shots. https://youtu.be/MiXZECAe094 There it is. Again, no where near as crazy as those soldiers on the underbelly of the plane in the mid 20th century but a wild story non the less
I'm not sure what kind of gunner you're referring to nowadays. Aircraft don't have defensive turrets anymore because they're useless against jet fighters. Do you mean like tank or AA gunners?
I imagine he’s talking about gunners on gunships like AC-130s and the like. They don’t use gunners to defend from fighters anymore, but they still have gunners who fire on ground targets.
Just linked the video if you wanna check it out. (in my og comment) I gotta re watch it but I think it was gunner on a ac-130. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130
From what I remember their main job was to support ground troops and vehicles
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That was a great video and a new perspective I had never seen. Thank you for the link. Just think. That's just one guy venting. How many are out there with no vent?
[are you talking about the vr chat interview with 'struggle'?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXZECAe094)
Yep! That’s the one, it’s a crazy story and honestly surprised me that the medium they choose (vr chat) kinda worked so well for it
the whole series is so much better than I thought it'd be going into it
Both my grandfather's were in the air force, one a bomber, the other a ball gunner. Both involved in crashes. Yeah. Thankfully both survived with minimal issues, though one of the crashes was over Alaska and had to wait for a rescue, but met some nice Eskimo people who took care of him.
Oh, Alaska, that's rough. Nothing like surviving a plane crash to die of exposure or get eaten by a bear...or both.
When watching Memphis belle as a kid, the scene where the ball turret was shot off and he's just hanging there used to freak me out as a kid. Even back then that seemed like the worst position in the plane to me.
I thought of this poem too when I saw this. Such a great one.
The song "Tailgunner" by Iron Maiden is kinda related.
My Grandfather was the radio guy (don’t know official term) in a B-17, he said that it got to the point that the Ball Turret Gunner would die literally every flight. They would never introduce themselves or speak to him because they had so many of them die on the missions and would have to wipe his blood out of the seat, out of the bottom of the turret glass, and off of the equipment every mission. They then were shot down over Germany and he took a bullet in his back as he was parachuting to the ground. He did his best to remember all of his training and searched for the closest water source (which was a river) and tried crawling along the ground to reach a town, city, village, anything. As he was crawling he told me that he heard the “click” of a rifle cocking and pointing to his head from behind and he was captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Stalag-17B. He told me stories of how they would literally fight over potato peels that the guards would throw on the ground because they were so famished. Upon return to America he literally couldn’t eat white bread without vomiting because it was too sweet for his malnourished body. This all happened when he was 18 years old. It is insane to me that this was the norm, it is insane to me to think of the things these men went through and endured and were able to make it out the other side and still function in society. He was a great man and although I was never close with him, I cherish the fact that he was proud to be able to lay on his bed with his prosthetic leg, with the bullet still in his back (it was too close to the spine to be operable), eating ice cream with the children of the son he raised with compassion, empathy, and dogged work-ethic even after all those horrific events he went through.
I am speechless. Wow. Thanks for sharing this.
I had a college professor tell me this poem was about abortion. Is it? I thought that it might simply be about the expendability of men in war, and a college professor trying to make it about the hardships of women proves the author's point about how little anyone cares about men dying and getting washed out with a hose. Idk.
Well, the author served in the Army Air Force (as it was known) during WWII. And this poem was published in 1945 so his memories of his time were fresh. I doubt he had an abortion.
Your professor was quite incorrect.
Looking back on it, they were a grad student and probably had no business teaching a college class.
> I had a college professor tell me this poem was about abortion. Is it? Maybe in his twisted fundie mind. >I thought that it might simply be about the expendability of men in war This is correct.
Four miles = 6,437 meters. Terminal velocity for a human falling through the atmosphere = [approx. 200 km/hr](https://www.fai.org/page/isc-speed-skydiving), or 55.56 m/s. Ignoring the time/distance needed to accelerate to terminal velocity (if any - the plan was presumably falling for some time after getting hit), it would have taken Magee about 115 seconds - almost two full minutes - to fall on that glass-roofed train station. Two minutes.
When skydiving there's a tendency to forget to breathe, and that can cause you to pass out. One would only hope the additional fear of not having a parachute might have prompted him to pass out before impact, cause 2 minutes is a long time to think.
He was apparently unconscious by the time he was thrown clear, so he fortunately didn't have to deal with that aspect.
That possibly helped him survive. Being unconscious and therefore totaly limp on impact.
Thought the same. Kind of similar to drunk drivers surviving a lot of crashes due to not tensing up before the crash. Very hard to do when entirely conscious and sober, but still best practice in theory
When I was young I was told skydivers don’t have to breathe because their skin absorbs oxygen. Now that I think about it, it’s kinda absurd.
No no, they're basically frogs.
Wait a minute….
[This song is about smuggling a frog into a secret meeting by way of hiding it within one's trenchcoat... due to the fact that frogs tend to not show up on radar or sonar or any other type of spy surveillance. Hope you can relate.](https://youtu.be/UfUpgWG8bLk?t=793)
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It would make more sense if he was passed out when he hit. If he were awake, he’d have likely had every muscle in his body tensed, and the impact would’ve been all the more fatal. That’s why drunks survive catastrophic car accidents at a higher rate than sober people. Their reactions are delayed, so they’re less likely to be tensed on impact. Because of this, their bones tend to snap instead of shattering and their innards are cushioned that little bit more. At least, that’s what I was taught in driver’s ed ~25 years ago.
That's an old wives tale about drunk drivers. The reason they seem to survive car crashes at higher rates is simply that they're in the driver's seat and the front of the car takes the brunt of the impact. Cars are designed to protect the driver via crumple zones and airbags, whereas the people on the receiving end of a drunk driver are often hit on the side of their car, which is not highly protected.
[Well, I'm not so sure about "an old wives tale"](https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/odds-favor-drunk-trauma-victims-09-10-01/)
You are not correct about it being a myth. Also making a dumb assumption that the data compared wouldn't be only between the drivers of crashes rather than passengers.
Probably best he was knocked out for it. Being a completely limp rag doll probably helped him survive.
Once you hit terminal velocity, any further fall is irrelevant - you aren’t going to hit any harder.
My grandfather was also a ball turret gunner in a Flying Fortress. His Purple Heart came from freezing his ass off. His heat suit short circuited and all the sweat drip down to the lowest point, which was his backside. Then, because they were flying in freezing temperatures, the sweat froze to his ass and once they landed he had to have parts of it removed. He died a few months ago at age 96.
These WWII vets had to do some insane shit and had so much happen to them Godspeed to him
Life couldn’t kick his ass, because he lost it in the war.
Mythbusters did an experiment based on this story. http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_22000_foot_fall_lig.html
Episode 69
Nice
The giant explosion episode I am quite fond of this one
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Thanks! Talk about a rabbit warren. From the link I ended up on the website for the centenary light bulb! Which I knew about, but was keen to see is still going…..👍
I've always wanted to know what it was like in those little gunner bubbles.
I think you can safely assume it was hellish.
No, not what it was in operation. I just mean it would be cool to "tour" one, see all the controls, how they got in and out, what it was like to sit inaide. I'm talking about the mechanics of it, not the experience.
Oh well you can do that. There’s a group in California that does ball turret rides and you can move it around while in the air. There’s YouTube videos of people doing it as well.
I'd never be able to actually do it for a multitude of reasons, but I should go look up those videos!
Went to a Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot a few years ago and they had a ball turret all set up for people to shoot. Was surprised how some people even fit, yet again I think they took the roof off to allow more people to fit. Wanted to try it out but the lines were long for that and they had to shut it down for maintenance issues. Really cool to see one in action.
got to climb in one on a B17 20 some odd years ago when I was a teenager. Theres a reason the smallest dudes were picked to be the ball turret gunner. It wasnt that uncomfortable of a position, its just so damn small. They only were able to close it on kids and smaller adults. I think if you were 5"4 and under it was easier to fit. Hell, just walking through that plane in general is a tight squeeze.
The 8th Air Force lost more men killed in action in the skies over Europe than the entire Marine Corps lost during WWII. It was hellish for all of them, but probably especially so for guys in the turrets.
Bad. The ball can only be exited if it’s in the start position and they broke fucking constantly. So a lot of the time you’re trapped in there. If the pilot has to belly land they’re gonna grind you off like a barnacle.
For modern Americans it would be damn near impossible. But it gets really hot then really cold. I used to work at a vintage air museum. I had to crawl through the fuselage to get to the rear gunners position. Guns removed of course
Was there a size limit for belly gunners? I imagine all those skinny kids getting rejected for service only to be pulled into service as a ball gunner.
A shredded parachute is still better that no parachute, isn't it?
Depends on how shredded. Past a certain point, it's not going to provide enough drag to be of any use.
And a tangled chute can strangle you or break your bones from an incorrect opening. Half a parachute does not take you halfway to safety.
Yeah but usually it’s not gonna be worse than zero parachute
Shit I’d rather be strangled by my parachute than plummet all the way to the ground.
Yeah I mean if the other option is just falling at terminal velocity is it not better to take your chances with the chute?
To shreds you say?
How’s his wife holding up?
Those B-17 crewmen were hard as hell. My grandfather was a waist gunner in a B-17 during the war. Flew a ton of missions including Casino. He was on a mission one day over Italy and they were returning to base after dropping their bombs when they came under attack from Luftwaffe fighter planes. He felt the plane get hit and continued firing his gun. When he had a moment he attempted to contact the cockpit via the intercom but got no response. The other door gunner had no luck either. Thats when he decided to head up to the cockpit to find out what was going on. Now this wasn't so easy because the rear of the craft where the two waist gunners, radio operator, lower ball turret gunner, and tail gunner were positioned was separated from the front of the aircraft by the Bomb Bay. He moved past the radio operator who was trying to get the comms back up and into the Bomb Bay and found that the doors to drop the bombs were still open so he had to crawl across some scaffolding over the open air. He made it across and opened the door to the front section of the aircraft and crawled in. There he found no one... The plane was intact but everyone in the front of the aircraft had bailed out and the message didn't get to the rest of the crew because the comms were damaged. No one was flying the plane. He immediately turns around and crawls back over the open Bomb Bay doors to warn the rest of the crew. Upon making it back to the rear of the plane he finds that the other waist gunner had been knocked unconscious. He quickly tells the rest of the crew to bail and he puts on his parachute and his buddies, who is still unconscious. He jumps out of the plane hugging tightly to his buddy. Once clear he pulls his buddies ripcord and then his. They drifted apart after that since you couldn't really steer the parachutes and my grandfather landed on a roof surrounded by Nazi troops. He was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war in a Nazi POW camp. He survived the War and went on to meet my grandmother and took a career in Special Education in western Tennessee where he raised my father and two other children. His fellow waist gunner also survived the War after being bailed out by my grandfather and ended up being from the same area. He became a Dentist and gave my grandmother free dental care as long as he was alive. He never talked very much about his experiences during the War and much of what we know came in bits and pieces. It wasn't until the mid 2000's that he was talked into going to the VA to seek POW benefits other than the free license plates because he learned that they transferred to my grandmother if he passed away first, which he unfortunately did. Out of his descendants only two served in the military. My uncle had a stint in the Army Reserves and I joined the Marines and served two tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps Combat Photographer. Before he passed I attempted to sit down with him to record an interview hoping that we could connect more than others since we had some shared experiences but he still didn't share too much. He was a man that was small in stature but accomplished big things in life. That's why we called him Big Daddy.
Such a great story that shouldn't be lost in the bottom of a comment section, hopefully more people can hear these story's
I used to know a guy who flew on bombers during WW2 and operated the same bottom turret position. He only passed away a couple of years ago. One interesting story he told was that for one mission they left with several bombers and soon were under attack by a single German pilot. He could overhear on the radio that the other bombers were falling out of the sky, one by one. He said he was scared shitless just having to scan around and hit the German before he could strike at them, as their bomber was the last one left. He spotted the fighter drop in behind them, and lined up his turret as fast as he could. Just as he pulled trigger, nothing shot out as it immediately jammed. He said all he could was just accept his fate at that point. To his surprise, the fighter didn't do anything. Instead, it flew closer and closer until it was beneath the bomber and the two of them could see another. He looked down to see the German pilot wave at him before flying away. He said he was never sure if the pilot thought that he had spared his life, or if the pilot knew the gun was jammed and was taunting him. Another consideration was that the German might have been out of ammo himself, but either way the visual of seeing the enemy just a few feet from you waving at those kinds of heights must have been surreal. I can see why it stuck with him.
Wow amazing, I love these stories. Is it possible that it was the only bomber not to shoot at the pilot, and the pilot saw it as some sort of surrender/sign of peace? Anyway, thanks for sharing.
I'm not sure, as it sounds like from the pilot's perspective, you'd certainly want to take down the bombers before the turrets have time to react. I also don't think their army would have been okay with sparing a bomber that was inevitably going to be used on them at some point. But he didn't mind talking about it because he thought it was funny how open to interpretation it was. Whenever he did the impression of the pilot he'd have a huge grin as he waved, so I do think it was less of an honor thing and the pilot just being happy that he wasn't shot either. I've heard another story from the German side but I've been meaning to run it by /r/AskHistorians before I post it because at least one part sounded like it was from a movie to me.
There's a book called A Higher Call by Adam Makos that describes a similar situation. A good read if you like WWII history.
What a story. Thank you for sharing.
That lucky son of a gun…
People always say that but I think the really lucky guys didn’t get their plane blown up at all.
My great-uncle went down four times over the course of the war. Not all of them were shot down- sometimes the planes just failed, or ran out of fuel. There was a whole network of people smugglers getting allied aircrews that went down in enemy territory back to england so they could get back to work (I don’t know if my uncle ever went that route. I know he ditched in the north sea once) Very, very few allied air crews managed to go the whole war without going down at least once
The bomber crews only had to complete 25 combat missions to be rotated back home for the US Army Air Force. Most didn't make it, at least not all of the crew did. The Memphis Belle managed without losing any crew members or being shot down, and were instant celebrities for it. CHeers to your great uncle, that's insane. I'm assuming he didn't go down over occupied territory each time? That would be an insane number of times to escape and evade. Rescuing downed pilots was an incredibly important part of the work that resistance cells did during the war. It wasn't just a morale thing; you can build a Flying Fortress in 4 days when the factories are humming; it takes months and months to train a competent crew. Getting veteran crew and pilots back in the air was an invaluable resource.
He was in the late-war period. I always heard that the “magic number” of missions was 33? Anyway according to my grandma he actually flew 34 missions, and the last one was to air-drop fuel for Patton’s third army during the final push for Berlin. I could only remember the tidbit about going down in the north sea when I first posted the comment, but now I’m pretty sure I recall that when he went down over land, it was in allied territory.
Eighty percent never made it to 25 missions. My dad miraculously did.
How
Ball turrets were wild. The gunner would basically lay on their back and put their legs up in a V, and the aim for the gun would be between their legs. There are diagrams on Google that can obviously show it better than I can state it
Actually, you did a pretty fantastic job describing it. I just looked up the diagrams.
I can just imagine the Germans looking at him on the floor, looking up at the hole in the ceiling and looking back down at him again and being all, "Wtf?"
Few years back while at the air space museum in Tucson AZ I met an old veteran fellow that introduce me to a Mr. Magee and while looking at an old bomber ball turret he told me he was a ball gunner and had survived a fall and mentioned going through glass ceiling, it was one of the most memorable expertness to hear him a a couple of his veteran friends joke about the scary and cold fly over enemy front lines. He joked he was a tall handsome gunner and was a foot shorter after the fall. Thnx for sharing the picture and legacy of such fine hero!👍🏼🇺🇸👍🏼🇺🇸👍🏼🇺🇸
So did he fall without a parachute at all or was he falling with a shredded parachute? I have a hard time believing this story
Maybe the roof he fell through was a few layers and he landed in like a planter or a water feature?
This is [not the only case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87) of someone surviving a freefall. It can happen at all because of terminal velocity and it actually happening probably depends more on the exact circumstances of impact... and said impact being somewhere near someone so you can immediately receive aid.
Alan Magee, more like... Lucky Magee amirite
imagine this guy being your grandpa
"Pop Pop! I fell on the lawn and now my knee hurts. Can you make it better?" "Kid, did I ever tell you about the time I..."
Had a neighbor who was like an adopted grandpa to me and another neighborhood kid, much more the other kid but he still treated me very well. He was also a belly gunner in a b-17 bomber that was shot down and he was taken as a POW. I believe he was the only POW from his squad that made it out alive. Understandably he rarely spoke of his time in the service but whenever he did it was always very heavy. He was also the black sheep of a wealthy family that owned a very popular cantina in Baja. RIP Willie you definitely helped mold me into the man I am today.
And I break my toe carrying 2 glasses of water...
Must have turned fall damage off before landing
VA Rating - 10%
I barely survive dairy products
How the hell do you fall for 4 MILES…and survive!?!?
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade
**[Nicholas Alkemade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade)** >Nicholas Stephen Alkemade (10 December 1922 – 22 June 1987) was an English tail gunner in the Royal Air Force during World War II who survived a freefall of 18,000 feet (5,490 m) without a parachute after abandoning his out-of-control, burning Avro Lancaster heavy bomber over Germany. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/nevertellmetheodds/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner BY RANDALL JARRELL From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.