As you’ll see in the historical footage below, a B-17 squadron gets attacked by Nazi fighters. Though tough to watch, the audio from the intercom (the voices were added later) will show you the horrors these brave crews faced every time they flew missions.
B-17s dropped over six hundred thousand tons of bombs over Europe in daylight raids alone, mainly targeting Axis airfields and arms factories, but also rail yards and bridges. The worst day for the USAAF was 14 October 1943, when three hundred Fortresses took off for Schweinfurt. Sixty were shot down over Germany, five crashed on their return to Britain, and twelve more were scrapped due to damage, a loss of nearly eighty B-17s.
In this video the crew members see a B-17 hit, with an engine catching fire. It then begins to plummet towards the earth; five parachutes deployed. However, B-17 crews typically consisted of ten men.
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