4/11/2023 0 Comments Wwii bomber crew age![]() You had respect for what they did and how they did it, particularly the gunners who were in the waist of the aircraft standing in an open window. While you were in battle you had to rely on each member of your crew to perform their job to perfection or else you didn’t survive. How did expectations for survival impact the bonds developed within a crew? The sheer terror that we confronted was so devastating that it left a mark on us for life. ![]() It was so horrific that just one mission could turn our hair white. That our chances of coming back were so minimal that we should accept our fate and just do the best that we could, for as long as we could.įacing your mortality to that degree is a very sobering and maturing experience. That was the mindset that we were supposed to take into combat. You’re all going to be killed and you might as well accept it.” When we were preparing to go overseas our commanding officer called us together and said, “Look at the man on either side of you. Can you describe the mental toll of confronting your own - or your men’s - mortality with each mission? Robert Morgan, remarked that you might have breakfast with 10 crewmen, but dinner with only two. That air superiority was evident when the pilot of the Memphis Belle, Capt. But they devastated us with that technique for as long as they could. It wasn’t until Boeing developed the G model (Boeing B-17G), which had a chin turret, that we would be able to cover that void. They played chicken with us, firing the whole way. There was a gap in-between the top turret and ball turret guns so they would fly in that slot, straight through our formations. ![]() The first of which was that we could not fire our guns straight forward. Through a baptism of fire, we found out how professional and clever they were in discovering our vulnerabilities. Your girlfriends and wives are being romanced back in the States, but as long as you’re here we’re going to teach you a lesson.” And by God they did. When our group arrived in England, “Axis Sally” ( Mildred Gillars) came on the radio and welcomed us, by name, to the war saying, “This isn’t your war, you don’t have any business being here. They’d been fighting on the Eastern Front, through the Battle of Britain, and they knew what they were doing. The minute that we crossed the French coast we were in their backyard. ![]() The Germans were professionals and we were rank amateurs. ![]()
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