Most dangerous position in a B-17

[WARSPITER]

Most dangerous position ? Probably just behind the weak nose armour working the pedals to turn the prop. Ahh,
wrong plane, wrong thread. Carry on....

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

​

That diagram is a nice find.

Trouble with it is at the start of June 1944 the 8th had 21 B-17 and 18 B-14 groups operational with a final B-24 group becoming operational on 6 June. On 22 July two B-24 groups went non operational to convert to B-17, another two on 7 August, then another two on 25 August, meaning at the end of the month it was 24 B-17 and 13 B-24 groups operational and 2 B-17 groups non operational.

The USAAF Statistical Digest says the June to August 1944 heavy bomber losses on combat missions was 1,003.

The still incomplete loss list I am using has 450 B-24 and 622 B-17 lost June to August inclusive, of which 39 B-24 and 40 B-17 losses were on non combat sorties. 303 B-24 and 415 B-17 were missing on operations, another 108 B-24 and 167 B-17 made it to friendly territory before their loss. The missing aircraft had 2,569 men killed, the other 275 non missing aircraft report 365 men killed. So the wartime study may be in returning damaged aircraft.

From Courage and the Air War by Mark Wells.

The airmen saw plenty of death, 8th air force bombers came home with 1,175 dead and 4,689 wounded crewmen on board in the first half of 1944. One story has a bomber exploding in front of another and the pilots of the second bomber watching the body of a man falling into one of their propellers, splattering the results all over the windscreen where it quickly froze. The pilot had to borrow a knife to lean out and scrape the windscreen. While on a later mission the pilot suffered the psychological impact of this experience.

As for what was feared the most Mark Wells notes in passing, speaking of the USAAF, "Formation leaders and pilots enjoyed only very limited ability to avoid flak and were obviously restricted in manoeuvring against fighters. Gunners, on the other hand, might occupy themselves by shooting at the Germans, but could only watch flak as it arced toward their aircraft. Bomber pilots more often feared fighters, while their gunners feared flak. If there was an identifiable tendency, it was to fear things more that one felt helpless to act against.

This partly explains the fact that fighter pilots often tended to show less anxiety than did their bomber crew counterparts. Fighter pilots were more in a position to "control their own destinies" in a given situation."