The B7 Flying Fortress was without a doubt the backbone of America’s bombing campaign over Europe. But flying in one demanded insane mental toughness as the odds of coming home were ridiculously low. Half of all crewmen were killed, wounded, or captured. And the stories of those who somehow made it back reveal only a glimpse of how horrific operating the B7 really was.
We’ll get to those soon, but first, let’s quickly set the stage. When the United States entered World War II, it joined Britain in launching a massive joint bombing campaign against Nazi Germany. The goal was ambitious. Germany’s ability to wage war by destroying it from above. If they could level factories, break infrastructure, and shut down military production.
Maybe they wouldn’t even need a full-scale invasion to win. Allied commanders believed the war could be decided in the sky. And the centerpiece of that strategy was the B17. This was America’s answer to the challenge of strategic bombing, an airborne hammer built to smash German industry from 30,000 ft. They called it the Flying Fortress.
And that wasn’t just for show. By the time the definitive B17G rolled out, it carried 1350 caliber machine guns arranged across almost every angle of attack. From most directions, trying to approach a B17 meant flying straight into a wall of bullets. Gunners in the waist, tail, and top turret could catch attackers from the sides or above, while the ball turret handled threats from below.
If you tried to shoot it down, chances were high that something was already aiming back at you. But why did it need that much firepower in the first place? And more importantly, how did so many still end up getting destroyed? Well, for that, you’d have to ask the German anti-aircraft batteries. Unlike the British RAF, which switched to night bombing early on, the Americans believed in daylight precision raids.
They thought that if you packed bombers in tight enough formations with overlapping fields of fire, they could fight their way through flack and fighters, drop their bombs right on target, and come back in one piece. It sounded good on paper. In practice, every fourth bomber was shot down. And for the crew, the odds were even worse.
One out of every two never made it back. And to make matters worse, even when bombers did survive the trip, their bombs often didn’t hit anything useful. Only about 20% actually struck their intended targets. The biggest threat early in the war was enemy fighters. That’s why the B7 was loaded with machine guns in every direction.
It had to be its own defense system. But eventually that began to change. Once the P-51 Mustang entered the fight as a long range escort, bombers finally had the kind of air cover they’d been missing. With the Mustangs flying alongside them, the odds against the Luftwaffer started to shift. But that still left flack, and nothing on the B17 could stop that.
German anti-aircraft defenses were brutal. They didn’t just scatter cannons across the countryside. They built tight defensive rings around anything of value with 88 and 105 caliber guns arranged in massive batteries. Dozens, sometimes hundreds working together. And they weren’t blindly firing into the sky.
These were coordinated strikes guided by radar and fire control systems that calculated exactly where the bombers would be and when. As the formation approached its target, the sky ahead would suddenly burst open with puffs of black smoke. Each one a shell exploding right where the bombers were flying. A direct hit meant instant death.
But even near misses were deadly. Shrapnel would slice through the aluminum fuselage, tear apart control cables, rupture fuel tanks, and cut through crew positions like paper. And the worst part, the bombers couldn’t dodge. Standard protocol required them to stay in tight formation. No weaving, no diving, no evasive maneuvers of any kind.
The bombardier needed a stable, steady platform to aim accurately. So in those moments, as the sky exploded around them, the crew had no choice but to fly straight through it and hope they came out the other side. You’d see it happen right in front of you. A bomber in the formation would take a hit, start trailing smoke, then slowly drop out of the sky.
And in those moments, you’d hope maybe you’d see a parachute or two open below. But most of the time there weren’t any. After the bombs were dropped, the formation would finally break and head back to base. But that return trip was far from safe. Plenty of aircraft never made it home. Still, the B7 had a reputation for toughness, and it earned it.
The sight of damaged bombers limping back across the channel became disturbingly routine. Engines out, fuselages shredded, entire sections gone, yet somehow still flying. And with that in mind, let’s talk about one that came back in two pieces, literally. It was February 1st, 1943. A group of B7s lifted off from Biscre, Algeria, heading for German occupied seapports in Tunisia.
Among them was a bomber nicknamed All-American. The mission went as planned. Bombs were dropped and the formation began the long 300-mile journey back to base. That’s when two German Meshmmit fighters launched a head-on attack. The gunners on board All-American opened fire immediately, shooting down the first fighter in flames.
The second one peeled off, but not cleanly. Its pilot had been hit and the aircraft spiraled out of control. What happened next defied every known rule of flight. The second fighter narrowly missed the waist gunner and slammed through the tail section of All-American. Its wing sliced deep into the fuselage, nearly shearing the tail clean off.
The tail gunner suddenly found himself in what was basically a separate aircraft. the entire rear end of the plane barely hanging on by a few thin strips of metal on one side and fragments of the floor beneath him. From another bomber nearby, Lieutenant Charles Cutforth managed to snap a photo. It would become one of the most surreal images of the entire air war.
A B17 still flying, its tail almost fully detached, swinging freely in the air. Two engines were out. The left horizontal stabilizer was gone. The left elevator was missing. The rudder and vertical fin were mangled. Nearly every control wire to the rear section had been severed. In aviation terms, the plane was completely screwed.
But by some freak twist of luck, the autopilot had been engaged at the exact moment of the collision. And instead of relying on mechanical cables that had just been destroyed, the system used electrical wiring and servo motors. That gave the pilots just enough control to keep the plane steady.
Even as the tail twisted and swayed behind them, the rest of the formation slowed down to fly beside their wounded comrade, watching in disbelief. The rest of the formation watched, eyes locked on all American as it somehow stayed in the air. It didn’t just escape enemy territory. It made it all the way back.
The crew landed safely with no serious injuries. The bomber was even repaired and sent back into combat flying missions until the wars end. And if that sounds unbelievable, wait until you hear what happened to Alan Maji. Because falling out of a bomber without a parachute didn’t just happen once. It happened more than anyone would think.
On January 3rd, 1943, the US 8th Air Force launched a major raid over Sanair, France, targeting the German Yubot pens. One of the bombers, a B17F, nicknamed Snap, Crackle, Pop, carried 20-year-old ball turret gunner Alan Maji. It was his seventh mission. As they neared the target, flack filled the sky. An explosion knocked out an engine.
Then, a direct hit tore into the right wing and the plane began spiraling. Maji was trapped in the ball turret, a 4ft wide space too small to hold a parachute. His chute had to be stored in the fuselage. To reach it, he’d need to rotate the turret, open the hatch, climb back inside the bomber, grab the chute, strap in, and bail out.
All while the aircraft was breaking apart. Somehow, he made it inside. But the parachute was destroyed. At 20,000 ft, another explosion ripped through the bomber and blew Magie out into open air. He lost consciousness from the freezing cold and lack of oxygen and plummeted four miles down. But instead of dying on impact, Magi crashed through the glass roof of the Sunair train station.
The angled panels slowed him just enough to survive and slammed onto the floor below. German soldiers found him barely alive, his right arm and leg broken, his nose and one eye injured, and 28 shrapnel wounds across his body. They were so stunned he was still breathing, they rushed him to get medical care.
After treatment, Maji spent 18 months as a prisoner of war before being liberated in 1945. He lived to age 84, carrying both the scars and the memory of the day he survived a 4-mile fall without a parachute. But Maji wasn’t the only one to fall out of a bomber and survive. In November 1943, Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran flew as tail gunner in a B17 named Ricky Tickary on a mission over Bremen, one of the most heavily defended targets in Germany.
What was supposed to be a standard bombing run quickly turned into chaos. As they neared the city, Luftwaffer fighters swarmed the formation. Moran was shot in both arms. An explosion broke his ribs. Then he discovered his parachute had been shredded, useless. Seconds later, a direct hit ripped the entire tail section off the plane.
In an instant, Moran was trapped in a tumbling metal coffin, spinning through the sky at 20,000 ft. He had no way out, so he stopped struggling, relaxed, and braced for the end. But the tail slammed into a tall pine tree, slowing the crash just enough to save his life. When German troops arrived, they expected to find a body.
Instead, they found Moran, still alive. Surviving the fall was only the beginning for Eugene Moran. His skull was crushed, his body badly wounded, and his life hanging by a thread. But by some twist of fate, a Serbian doctor himself a prisoner of war, managed to treat him using minimal supplies. Moran then spent 18 months in a German prison camp.
and against all odds survived until liberation. Just months later in January 1944, another B17 tail gunner faced nearly the same ordeal. His name was James Ley. On a mission near Athens, his bomber Skippy collided with another B7 in thick clouds. Like Moran, Lei ended up trapped in a detached tail section, falling fast from 20,000 ft.
He didn’t even realize the rest of the plane was gone. He thought the crew was falling with him. The wreck slammed into trees, slowing the impact and saving his life. After several minutes of free fall, Lei climbed out and saw the truth. He was completely alone. The rest of the bomber had vanished.
He was later rescued by Greek Orthodox monks who saw the crash and took him in. Now, for those who weren’t thrown out midair, bailing out was the only hope, but even that was dangerous. The B7 had narrow exits and tight hatches. Crewmen wore bulky suits and often had to jump while the aircraft was in a spin or on fire. Some were knocked out during the escape.
Even if you made it out, survival wasn’t guaranteed. Of all the B17s that were shot down, only about 25% of crew members successfully bailed out and deployed their parachutes. And if you think falling without a parachute or surviving in a detached tail was the ultimate miracle, think again. Because what happened to Lovely Julie over Cologne might top them all.
On October 15th, 1944, the bomber took a direct flack hit right to the nose. First Lieutenant Lawrence Dancency had just watched the bombardier release their payload when the world in front of him exploded. A flack shell detonated right in the nose compartment, killing Staff Sergeant George Abbott instantly. His body, in a final act of unintentional heroism, absorbed most of the shrapnel that would have shredded the rest of the crew.
The entire nose of the B7 simply vanished. Plexiglass, metal, internal supports gone. All that remained was a gaping hole. Delansancy found himself at 20,000 ft flying an aircraft that had no front end. He was basically sitting in a wind tunnel, fully exposed to -40° air at 200 mph. And it got worse. The blast had shredded the instrument panel.
No altimeter, no compass, no airspeed indicator. The oxygen system was knocked out too, which meant the crew would begin to suffocate if they stayed at that altitude for more than a few minutes. Staring into the frozen void, Delansancy had to make a decision and fast, he dropped the nose of the bomber, lowering its height in chase for breathable air.
But that meant flying low across a stretch of German territory packed with anti-aircraft batteries and fighter patrols. It was a death run, and it was the only shot they had. Navigator Raymond Leu, who’d lost all his maps and equipment in the blast, was now flying blind, trying to guide them home, using only landmarks and instinct.
The rest of the crew, freezing and exposed to the wind, braced for the crash they were certain was coming. But Delansency wasn’t finished. Somehow, he held the aircraft together. The bomber, now missing half its face, limped across the Rine, crossed the channel, and made it all the way back to Nuthamstead, England.
