B-17 - Fantastic Story of Survival

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[Windflier]

You forgot the A-10 Warthog.

Oh, my little list wasn't complete by any means. Thanks for mentioning the Warthog. It's definitely one of those machines that's equal to more than the sum of its parts.

[tomatomaster]

Here’s the book: Rite of Passage: A Teenager’s Chronicle of Combat and Captivity in Nazi Germany by Ray Matheny
(My Freepmail isn’t working)

Theo

[Stonewall Jackson]

Amazing.

One of my neighbors (he passed away several years ago) was a waist gunner on a B-17 over Europe. He and the nose gunner combined to down an Me-262. Unfortunately, on their next mission another 262 got them.

Len and the rest of the crew managed to bail out over Holland, where they were found by the local resistance, who helped get them back to friendly lines two days later.

[Windflier]

One of my neighbors (he passed away several years ago) was a waist gunner on a B-17 over Europe. He and the nose gunner combined to down an Me-262. Unfortunately, on their next mission another 262 got them.

It's amazing to me that they even got the first one. Those things flew faster than anything they'd ever seen.

[Stonewall Jackson]

Both incidents occurred in late 1944, so the jets involved were from Kommando Nowotny, the experimental squadron tasked with developing jet combat tactics. The squadron downed 22 Allied aircraft but lost 15 jets in combat and 11 others to operational accidents.

By early 1945, the Germans had vastly improved their jet tactics and managed to achieve a more than 4:1 kill ratio during the last three months of the war.