I seem to recall a statistic (though it seemed a bit extreme/severe) that, essentially, 70% of all men who left England on a B-17 heading out over The Continent were eventually shot down and killed or taken prisoner, or their airplane came back to England, but they were dead, before getting to 25 missions to come home.
A far cry from today’s “video-game” wars.
That statistic could be on the money. WWII Army Air Force had a higher casualty rate than the infantry.
Recently I’ve seen a B-17 flying over my neighborhood here in SoCal. Don’t know the name of the plane.