I hooked my parachute on and I got my hat. I put that on, then I decided, well, heck, I’d probably lose it anyhow, so I threw it away and got a bail-out oxygen bottle… I don’t know why all these silly thoughts went through my head, like wanting to get my hat, but anyway, I was beginning to feel the effects of the lack of oxygen – anoxia, we called it – getting a bit lightheaded… I decided I’d better get out of there right away. I just did a somersault right out the door and down I went. 29
Summers fell several thousand feet before he pulled the ripcord of his parachute, and only did so when he thought he might pass out. One of the waist gunners was not so lucky – he was killed in his position by flak. And Kenny Harland, the valiant gunner who had carried on shooting despite having his top turret blown apart, died when he hit the ground. Everyone else survived to become prisoners-of-war. That they did, and that they had so much time to bail out, is testament to the sheer strength of the B-17 Flying Fortress under punishment.
Some of the planes from the other groups were having just as tough a time. Philip Dreiseszun was a navigator in 381st BG when the full force of the German fighter formations attacked:
The enemy swarmed at us from all directions. Our gunners, Houck [the bombardier] and myself were all firing; new belts of ammunition were hurriedly installed as rounds were expelled… Our plane lurched, shuddering heavily as 20mm shells tore through the fuselage and Plexiglas windows. Houck spun around from his front firing stance, sinking to our little deck in a sitting position. I was slammed against the worktable but felt no pain. The attack ended, and I turned my attention to Houck. Above his chest-pack parachute was a gaping hole which spurted blood… I prayed for some sign of life; there was none. 30
When the bail-out order came, Dreiseszun agonized over whether he should push his dead comrade out of the plane with his parachute on so that he could be recovered for burial once he reached the ground. But, reasoning that the parachute might get caught on the tailplanes and endanger the rest of the crew, he decided eventually to leave him where he was. He pulled the cord on the emergency hatch, kicked open the door and leaped through it into 27,000 feet of cold space and nothingness.
I let myself fall free in the awesome quiet. I estimated about 2000 feet and then pulled the ripcord. The ’chute jerked violently as it unfurled, buffeted by the strong wind at that altitude. The leg straps tightened painfully in the groin area. On seeing the ’chute unfold, I knew I was a goner! It was full of large holes, small holes and many tears. How it kept me afloat… I’ll never know. During the attack, a 20mm shell had evidently made a direct hit on my parachute… The final 6000–7000 feet were like a free fall. I hit the ground with such a jarring impact, it felt like every bone in my body had shattered. I lost consciousness. 31
When he came to a German soldier was sitting on him, searching him for weapons. He was lucky. Two of his crewmates who had landed nearby were killed by a mob of angry civilians. The tail gunner went down with the plane. The other five members of the crew survived to become prisoners-of-war.
A pattern was emerging in the Luftwaffe’s attacks. First the fighters picked off the stragglers – those planes that were already crippled by flak and earlier fighter attacks. Then they concentrated on the planes at the back of the formation – most of the B-17s lost had started off at the back. And, finally, once one or two of the smaller formations were under strength (and therefore had fewer guns with which to defend themselves), the fighters came in to finish off the rest.
It was this last point that proved particularly devastating. While some bomb groups made it home relatively untroubled, others suffered attack after attack all the way across Germany and most of the way across the North Sea. Of the three bombardment groups in the Klöckner wing, for example, two only lost a single plane on the way home. The third, which had been severely depleted from the outset when seven of its planes had aborted their mission, received the full brunt of the German storm. This group, the 381st, lost three planes on the way home – and all three were in the same squadron, Dreiseszun’s 532nd.
The story was the same for the Blohm & Voss wing. The twenty-one planes in the lead group suffered just fifteen attacks and lost two planes, both stragglers. The high group was attacked nineteen times, and lost one plane out of twenty – again, a straggler. The low group (the 384th BG) was attacked eightytimes – more than twice the number of the other two groups put together. 32It
Attacks on 384th BG, 25 July
lost seven planes that afternoon, six from the same squadron, the 544th, which was all but wiped out.
The reasons for this loss were simple: the low squadron of the low group was the most vulnerable place to fly in the entire formation, and was often nicknamed ‘Purple Heart Corner’ or ‘Coffin Corner’ because of the disproportionate number of planes that were shot down there. After they had come through Hamburg, 544th Squadron had been under relentless attack for forty minutes, and four of the seven planes were now struggling to keep up. They were picked off mercilessly by the German fighters. Once the squadron was down to three planes it was easy prey: the fighters came in again and again until two more had been shot down. The only plane left struggled upwards to fall behind the lead formation, but it had to suffer nine more sustained attacks before the fighters left it alone.
It goes without saying that every one of those stricken bombers went down fighting. Of the ten men in a B-17 crew, eight had guns to fire, and they did so until the bitter end. The pilot would only give the order to bail out once all hope was lost. He would switch on the automatic pilot, then he and whatever crew were still alive would don their parachutes and leap from the plane; with the automatic pilot in control, the empty plane would often fly dozens of miles further before it crashed. Some abandoned B-17s drifted as far as the Frisian Islands and the borders of Holland – seventy or eighty miles from where their crews had left them.
Sometimes the pilot would lower the landing gear before bailing out, in what was effectively a signal of surrender. At this stage in the war there was still an unofficial code of chivalry among aviators of all nations: if an American bomber lowered its wheels, the German fighters would stop firing and either escort the damaged plane to an airfield or circle it as the airmen dropped, one by one, in their parachutes. This admirable arrangement was spoiled later in the war when, according to USAAF legend, one bright spark had the idea of using the system to lure the Germans closer, then open fire on them. From that moment on, disabled American planes were given no quarter. 33
The final B-17 to go down that afternoon was flown by Thomas Estes – one of the last surviving planes from the low squadron of the low group. The crew had been under attack for well over an hour, and had already watched several of their squadron comrades go down. They had seen at least one man drop from a stricken plane without a parachute, his arms and legs thrashing as he fell. 34They had fended off so many attacks that the tail gunner and the ball-turret gunner had run out of ammunition: they had been reduced to tracking their attackers with empty guns in an attempt to make it look as if they were still firing. As the crew told the story later, the assault had been ferocious: ‘They came in pairs, attacked down, slashing along our left side… They totally disregarded our fire and pressed their attacks to within a hundred feet of our plane.’ 35