flakhappy
Airman
After reading all the msgs. in this forum here are only a couple of comments from an 85-yr old geezer who flew 51 missions in a B-17 in the 15th AF: There was very rarely any advantage from speed in a heavy bomber when the fighters could outpace any of us by at least a hundred mph. Much more important was a stable aircraft that one could depend on, and a plane that could fly the highest. There seems to be a big interest in the defenses against fighters when the much greater danger to bombers was the flak, to which we lost many more planes than to fighters. At least we could shoot back against fighters. We were mostly skinny kids who were scared to death on most missions---and cold. I see very few discussions or comments about the terrible cold. I for one chose to wear my GI shoes inside fleece-lined boots because if one had to bail out the boots usually flew off, and I didn't want to tramp around Europe in my stocking feet. My feet got so cold in 50-below temperatures that I kicked the bulkhead ahead of me in the radio room until it bulged into the bomb bay. The ground crew chief asked me one day if I had something against his airplane. Later developments in electric suits included heated gloves and shoes. Another memory that might be interesting to some: brass at 15th AF headquarters at one time wanted to remove the tracers from our ammo belts. We knew that tracers didnj't fly straight, but we argued successfully that it was most important that the enemy fighter pilots knew they had been seen and were being fired at. They would often pull away if they saw those golf balls flying past.