Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Three B-17s were shot down by flak over Schweinfurt. Fifteen minutes after leaving the target, each task force circled over the town of Meiningen to reassemble its formations, then continued west toward Brussels. At approximately 15:30, German fighters renewed their attacks, concentrating now on damaged bombers.
Boeing B-17F informally known as the Rikki Tikki Tavi was shot down over Syke in what is now Lower Saxony. [62] [63] despite the rear machine gunner not deploying a parachute. [64] Eight of the ten crew members were killed in the crash, and two survived, including the tail gunner who survived a fall of 28,000 feet inside the tail section of the ...
Of the 291 attacking Fortresses, 60 were shot down over Germany, five crashed on approach to Britain, and 12 more were scrapped due to damage – a loss of 77 B-17s. [107] Additionally, 122 bombers were damaged and needed repairs before their next flights.
Of the 291 B-17 Flying Fortresses sent on the mission, 60 were lost, another 17 damaged so heavily that they had to be scrapped and another 121 had varying degrees of battle damage. Losses represented over 26 percent of the attacking force and losses in aircrew were equally severe, with 650 men lost of 2,900, 22 percent of the bomber crews.
A Red Air Force unit claimed seven Finnish Brewster Buffalos shot down in a single action over Tiiksjärvi-Rukajärvi area and four destroyed on the ground. Not a single Finnish aircraft was confirmed by Finnish records. Soviet pilot V. I. Solomatin claimed to have shot down five Brewster fighters and was later honoured with Hero of the Soviet ...
Louis Turansky shot down over Germany. Louis Turansky, who served as a flight engineer/top turret gunner with the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, poses with his dog after riding on a float ...
The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress is a 1944 documentary film which provides an account of the final mission of the crew of the Memphis Belle, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. In May 1943 it became the third U.S. Army Air Forces heavy bomber to complete 25 missions over Europe, but the first to return to the United States.
Brown's struggling B-17 was now attacked by over a dozen enemy fighters (a combination of Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s) of JG 11 for more than ten minutes. [17] Further damage was sustained, including to the #3 engine, reducing it to only half power (meaning the aircraft had effectively, at best, 40% of its total rated power ...