Tales from a flying fortress

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Another B-17 Tale of Survival

About the B-17 Flying Fortress

o Boeing started design work in 1934 and the first flight was in 1935.

o About 12,700 Flying Fortresses were built, including 8,680 of the B-17G model.

o Normal bomb load for the B-17G was 6,000 pounds.

o Top speed was 287 mph at 25,000 feet, with a range of about 2,000 miles.

o Standard crew and armament was 10 men and 13 .50-caliber machine guns.

Important Dates in World War II

o Sept. 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland. War begins in Europe.

o Dec. 7, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

o Dec. 8, 1941: United States, Britain declare war on Japan. Congress declares war on Germany three days later.

o April 5, 1942: 16 American B-25 bombers attack Japan in raid led by Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle.

o June 7, 1942: U.S. naval forces turn tide in the Pacific at Battle of Midway.

o Nov. 8, 1942: U.S., British forces invade North Africa.

o Jan. 31, 1943: Germans surrender to Soviet army at Stalingrad.

o June 10, 1943: 8th Air Force, Royal Air Force start round-the-clock bombing of Germany.

o Sept. 3, 1943: Allied troops land in Italy.

o June 6, 1944: Allied troops land at Normandy.

o Sept. 11, 1944: U.S. troops move into Germany.

o Dec. 25, 1944: U.S. troops stop German advance in Battle of the Bulge.

o May 7, 1945: Germany surrenders.

o Aug. 6, 1945: Atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Second bomb dropped Aug. 9 on Nagasaki.

o Aug. 14, 1945: Japan surrenders on deck of battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

As the crippled B-17 bomber fell to earth near Belheim, Germany, the first man to bail out was Don Millar.

Which wasn’t as good as it sounds. Soldiers on the ground were shooting at the parachuting airmen, and Millar was the best target.

“I was the first one out and the last one to hit the ground,” the longtime Vancouver resident said.

Seventy years ago, Millar was a tail gunner on a Flying Fortress. That was the name given to the B-17, reflecting its durability and imposing firepower.

“We were a bunch of 19-year-old kids, running around in a million-dollar airplane,” Millar said, looking back at his 19 combat missions over Europe.

The B-17 that took Millar on his final bombing assignment in 1945 had a nickname of its own, and maybe it reflected something as well. It was called the “Screwball Express.”

Millar will tell you that he flew 18½ missions, which indicates that things didn’t go according to plan.

And this year, as the world observes the 70th anniversary of World War II’s conclusion, Millar can offer his own hard-won perspective on war.

“Everybody screws up.”

It included those soldiers who opened fire from the ground when the crew of the Screwball Express bailed out. They were Allied troops — Free French and Moroccan soldiers.

“They thought we were German paratroopers,” said Millar, a 1943 graduate of Vancouver High School.

For his part, the only fighter plane Millar came close to shooting down was an American P-51 Mustang.

And if someone else hadn’t screwed up while measuring Millar’s height, he wouldn’t have been a B-17 gunner at all.

“You had to be under 6 feet. I was a little over. I shrunk a little,” Millar said with a straight face.

The tail gunner was one of 10 crewmen on a B-17. He manned his twin .50-caliber machine guns from his knees while perched on a modified bicycle seat.

Millar’s crew flew from the 379th Bombardment Group’s base in Kimbleton, England. At that point in the war, they had to had to worry more about flak — anti-aircraft artillery — than German fighters, he said.

The crew flew its first mission on Feb. 24, 1945, over Hamburg, Germany.

“I had never seen flak before,” Millar said.

Two days later, their target was Berlin.

“When you’re a tail gunner on a plane that’s bombing Berlin, you see flak everywhere,” he said.

The crew had a close call coming back from that mission when fuel ran short.

“We were losing altitude, and we were going to be by ourselves, which is the worst thing that can happen,” Millar said.

In an attempt to lighten the plane, the pilot told his crew to throw off everything they could: ammo too.

Millar asked: “Can we shoot it?”

That was fine with the pilot, so Millar opened fire.

Millar said he was looking at his guns — “If you fire too long, they get hot” — and not where the rounds were going.

He never noticed an American fighter plane approaching.

“A P-51 had come in to see what was going on,” Millar said. “He took off.”

As he peeled away, Millar mused, the startled Mustang pilot probably was saying something along the lines of, “To hell with you!”

Millar still has his photocopy of the mission log that a crewman wrote in an address book. Data includes targets, bomb loads, enemy opposition, flight conditions and the ships they flew: names like Carol Dawn, Wish Bone, Red Dragon, Grim Reaper and Sleepy Time Gal.

The March 1 entry described the mission against railroad marshalling yards in Bruchsal, Germany:

“No flak over target. We bombed at 19,000 feet. … We missed railroad yards but blew town all to hell.”

Carlos Whitehead, the bombardier, also kept a diary that he shared with his crewmates.

Both documents describe how the B-17 originally assigned to the crew on April 5 was grounded by engine problems; the Screwball Express was the backup ride for the eight airmen. (At that point, a couple of crew positions weren’t manned).

By the time they were in the air, they were way behind their formation. The pilot, Lt. Joe Hourtal, sought an alternate target but their mission came to an abrupt end when three bursts of flak from 88mm guns hit the plane, damaging two engines. Hourtal ordered the crew to abandon ship.

“They ring a bell to advise you to bail out,” Millar recalled. “My job was to help the ball turret gunner get out of his turret.”

Then Millar bailed out from about 2,500 feet.

“It was a beautiful, sunny day,” he said. Far below, “I could see a German with a cart.”

The transition was stunning, he said.

“I had been in a plane full of noise, and then: Boom! Total silence.”

In Whitehead’s diary, he estimated that the plane was at about 1,000 feet when the last crewmen bailed out. Hourtal, the pilot was crippled, losing both his feet. Co-pilot Lt. Martin Kane was killed.

After initially shooting at the American airmen, the French army’s welcoming committee wound up passing around wine bottles.

When they returned to England, the surviving crew members were sent to a rest area. It was a bit more upper-crust than their standard G.I. accommodations, but anyone who’s seen “Downton Abbey” would feel right at home. They spent about a week at Ebrington Manor in Gloucestershire, complete with a butler to serve tea.

The war in Europe ended a month after they were shot down.

After the war, Millar went to school on the G.I. Bill, attending Washington State College and then the University of Portland. He got married and had a 50-year career in the insurance business.

Millar stayed in touch with his surviving crewmates, including one who never expected to see his wife again.

In Whitehead’s diary, he described finding the wounded pilot, whose chute was dangling from a tree. After providing some first aid, Whitehead told Hourtal that he would get help and come back. The injured pilot kept saying, “Tell Mary I love her.”

As Whitehead wrote:

“I told him that we would come back and get him and he could tell her his self.”

Hourtal did.