Well, it was almost a freefall from a WWII bomber, but...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1071076/posts
Re: Darrell H. Reno, B-17 navigator and judge, etc...
Greetings!
Even though I just read your above post from 2004, I’ll respond.
I grew up in Pontiac, Illinois and I can give you more details about Darrell Reno’s final flight in WWII.
Darrell ‘Doc” Reno was lead navigator in a large bombing group flying out of Italy in the final year of the European theater of WWII. It was his 25th mission as a B-17 navigator. The target was a factory in enemy territory, somewhere in Hungary as I recall.
Anyway, the plane was crippled due to damage from anti-aircraft fire taken shortly after dropping the bombload. As the rest of the group sped back to base, Reno’s plane lagged behind and finally had to break away from the formation for an alternate route to a destination way short of the base in Italy. All alone now and losing altitude, Darrell’s plane was vulnerable to fighter attacks and ground fire. In this case though, the plane was so badly damaged the crew had jettisoned all of the ammo and guns to lighten the load in hopes that they could coax the wounded bird over some mountains and into safer territory for an emergency landing. So they were not only vulnerable, but defenseless.
As navigator, it was Reno’s job to hand out maps to the crewmembers so they could make their ways to friendly destinations after the likely and expected eventual bailout or crash landing. As he was making his way through the cramped quarters distributing maps, things took a turn for the worse. A FW-190 German fighter closed in and fired on the B-17.
One of the potent 20 mm shells struck or exploded near Reno, nearly severing his right arm above the elbow. The crew, who had just been ordered to bail out because of the severe damage from the fighter attack, told the pilot that Reno was hurt too badly to bail out, and since he couldn’t, they weren’t going to bail out either. So, it was either going to be a crash landing or get blown out of the sky if the fighter made another pass...the 10 man crew would perish either way.
Upon hearing the crew’s suicidal decision to stay with the plane, ‘Doc’ did his best to gather his ruined and tangled chute under his good arm and clutching his shattered right arm with his left hand, shouted back, “The hell you say!”, and quickly jumped out of the bomb bay to his death, figuring the crew would then bail out to relative safety after he was gone. (When he was hit in the plane, Reno had fallen against a sharp rail of a bomb rack, tearing his parachute pack in the process. His chute popped out through the rip. A ripped and partially opened chute will not work and offers no safety to the jumper.)
Against all odds, as Reno tumbled out of the plane, the chute somehow caught a piece of hardware, or maybe the wind itself, just right so it could open and save him from death.
Well, as it turned out, the damaged and partially deployed chute turned out to be a blessing rather than a death curse. The way the D-ring chute release was designed and positioned, it requires a sharp tug with the jumpers right hand after bailing out. But Darrells right hand and forearm were dangling, barely attached to his upper arm which he held tightly to keep from bleeding to death. It is unlikely he could have opened even a perfectly packed undamaged parachute in his condition. The accidental on-board damage to his chute had actually saved his life rather than sealed his death.
An enemy army field doctor, a Hungarian, quickly but skillfully amputated the injured officer’s right arm and tied off the stump. Then he gave Reno a blood transfusion directly from himself, in an effort to save the young U.S. Army Air Corps officer’s life. Captured, the B-17 crew survived several months as prisoners of war until Russians liberated the camp in 1945.
On the boat home, the soldiers were talking about what they’d do when they got back stateside. Reno, who had studied before the war to become a field geologist, said he needed an easy job for a new left-hander that would make him a lot of money. Someone suggested, “You ought to be a lawyer then... they don’t have to do any work for their money.”
And so he did.
As a navigator, Darrell was assigned to various B-17 bombers and crews, sometimes for only one or a few missions each. On one mission with a new crew he did not have time to learn and remember every man’s name, so he took to calling each one of them “Doc”. The guys thought it was funny and as a joke, they all began calling Darrell by that nickname, “Doc”. They also thought it fitting since he was a college graduate and one of the oldest men on the plane. He was 24. The name stuck for the rest of the war.
The story of that last flight was told to a reporter by one of the officers who had served with Darrell Reno. It was published in an Urbana newspaper back in 1944 or 1945. Darrell was born and raised in Urbana.
Many years later, in the mid-1970’s, a Bloomington Illinois Pantagraph reporter contacted Judge Reno and asked if there might be a story behind his mechanical arm. Darrell suggested it was old news and asked why the reporter would even ask. Like many others who served and survived World War II, he had rarely if ever even told anyone what had happened in the war. But the reporter was persuasive, and he got the story.
Darrell told the reporter that the heroes in that war were the ones who did not come home.
Darrell H. Reno
Graduated University of Illinois Law school 1948. Practiced law in Pontiac, Illinois for over 20 years, and then retired after another 10 years as a judge there (11th Judicial Circuit) in 1982.
Darrell and Ruth Reno raised four sons. Ruth died in 1987 and Darrell in 1988.
ping #101