These guys were young, all under twenty, from the mid west, cherry faced complexion and wild hair blossoming all over the faces. typical of the teen age kids those days. In the early 1940's, the air crews of the early war were horsemen, farm hands, truck drivers, farm hands, delivery men, and plow boys, and they tell us, " simple folk. Easily trainable."
Our five guys found their way over to England after fumbling their way through flight training in the mid-west. In England, they joined up with the other half of their crew and their airplane. Now, complete, practice, the great game of molding ten men, 12 machine guns, and another dozen 500 pound bombs into one solid team poured into a mission all focused into one mission.
Our five from Mud ville, USA are all non commissioned officers, they are gunners: ball turret, left and right waist, radio operator and tail gunner. They ate, slept, practiced and drilled together.
And soon, they would know terror together.
Their first mission was over France, as a part of a huge fleet attack, bombing railroad marshaling yards, attempting to strangle German supply lines. Flight reports say it went well, the crew functioned well as a time, got home, calmed their nerves, hit the mess hall, and that was that.
The alert flat for the bomb group said mission next day - over the south of France, it was still early in the War. After breakfast and briefing, they were off the end of the runway briefly after sunrise. In massive air attacks involving large numbers of B-17s, there were occasional mid air collisions. Several B-17 pilots reported two bombers collided, and our guys were in one.
The five guys from middle America our five gunners were in the back end of the one
B-17 accidentally cut in half by the other similar airplane. The back end of their airplane folded over at 24,500 feet up over Calais, France, and slowly began to sink towards the earth. The gunners from Mud ville, were stranded on in the inside left clawing madly at the inside of their half airplane trying to reach the opening so they could roll out into the open air, their parachutes wrapped around their shoulders, hands or fastened hastily anyway they could.
The tail began to spin clockwise as a falling leaf does, picking up speed as it goes further and further down the four and one half miles down, the men still desperately clawing at the insides of the plane.
The other pilots report no chutes.
These five boys were the very first air casualties of the Air War over Europe against the Germans. The first to give their lives in the long long list of many that would lead to the end of the tyranny, blood-lust and murder that had gripped the world.
###
