B-24 returns home with severe flak damage

My dad was a mechanic with the 449th BG(H). He took a picture of this airplane after it landed, but I never heard the full story. Pretty amazing that any airplane could have brought back most of its crew under these conditions, especially a B-24, which wasn't known for being particularly robust.

https://449th.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ball-Crew-v3-1.mp4

This is from the page The 449th Bomb Group(H) | Flying Horsemen , which is loaded with pictures, histories and other compelling content.

Wow, just wow!

Nice one!

This reminds me of that old war story that has the same sort of ending as the story about the little boy who figured out how to get the truck unstuck from beneath the bridge where it was wedged: "Why don't you just let the air out of the tires?" The bomber story says that during the war some general decided to conduct a study to figure out where to put extra armor on our bombers. He had a team compile damage reports and see if there was a pattern of some parts of the bombers suffering more damage than others. Sure enough, some locations on the planes were indeed getting more than their share of flak damage. As he was preparing to order that the additional armor be concentrated in those places, one of his advisors said, "Sir, I actually think it would be smarter to put the additional armor in the places that received less damage." The general asked why on earth he thought that. The advisor answered, "Well, sir, these are the planes that made it back."

ClayO said:

My dad was a mechanic with the 449th BG(H). He took a picture of this airplane after it landed, but I never heard the full story. Pretty amazing that any airplane could have brought back most of its crew under these conditions, especially a B-24, which wasn't known for being particularly robust.

https://449th.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ball-Crew-v3-1.mp4

This is from the page The 449th Bomb Group(H) | Flying Horsemen , which is loaded with pictures, histories and other compelling content.

Click to expand...

My father was a ball-turret gunner in the 449th. (Flying Horsemen) The area that the pictured B-24 was returning from was most probably Ploesti. Ploesti was the oil refining facility providing the German forces up to 7000 barrels of fuel daily. Very well fortified against air raids.

Canray

If the video narrative is correct, the 15th AF B-24's on Nov 23, 1944 bombed railroad bridges at Zenica and Brod in Yugoslavia. The last 15th AF mission to Ploesti was 0n Aug 19, 1944. (My uncles first mission as a ball turret gunner on a 483rd B-17.)

Regardless of the target, returning any aircraft in that condition was and outstanding feat of airmanship.

Eagledad