Stans Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 Read the combat diary of a B-17 tail gunner, 26 missions beginning in late 1943. http://historyplace.com/specials/personal/gunner-diary1.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 Awesome read Stans thanks for the link , man he was a lucky guy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No105_Archie Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 Great link.....I think these guys had more guts (in some ways) than the fighter pilots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stans Posted November 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 I have heard that more enemy aircraft fell to the Allied bomber gunners than to Allied fighter pilots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donster Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 Great post Stans! If you haven't read the book The Wild Blue: The B24s Over Germany, 1944-45, by Stephen E. Ambrose, I highly recommend it. I am about halfway through it and am really enjoying it. Just a few interesting items from the book... 35,946 American airmen died in just accidents during WWII. In 1943 alone, 850 airmen died in 298 B-24 accidents. All airmen that were not officers were commissioned as Sergeants because the Germans treated officers and Sergeants better than lower rank enlisted men in the POW camps. This raised their chance of survival. In March 1944, 9000 combat aircraft were built in the US, 110,000 in that year alone. By March 1945, 7,177 US bombers were flying combat missions over Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dude Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 35,946 American airmen died in just accidents during WWII. That's a sad, but amazing statistic. The sacrifices made by the WWII generation was truly, truly incredible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stans Posted November 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 That's a sad, but amazing statistic. The sacrifices made by the WWII generation was truly, truly incredible. The greatest generation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dude Posted November 18, 2006 Report Share Posted November 18, 2006 Just finished reading John Gabay's diary. Oh! My! Gawd! How did he survive? How did any of them survive? The things he saw! If you saw the things he described in a movie, you'd think they were making it up for dramatic effect. Hair-raising stuff! And then, he came home to Brooklyn where he worked with the Department of Sanitation (I'm guessing he was a garbage man), had twelve kids, and passed away in his sixties. And to think, you or I might've lived on his garbage route and seen him and thought how much better we were than him because we weren't a garbage man (not saying we would, but we might have). There's a lesson in existentialism in there somewhere. Some times this world is just too surreal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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