100 year old former B-17 Pilot tells his story.

[Averageman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CAxfsBxK5U
Very Cool.

[dwhitehorne]

Wow 100. I could sit and listen to his stories all day. The things he has seen. He seems to be in amazing shape for being 100. David

[Averageman]

Yes, he's very sharp.
The amazing thing is how much the 8th Airforce managed to accomplish.
It's arguable that they won the war in Europe for us.

[flenna]

The skies over Europe was a brutal battleground. For a really good read check out Serenade to the Big Bird by Bert Stiles, a first hand account of a tour in a B-17. Bert Stiles was KIA on his second (voluntary) tour flying a P-51.

[SteyrAUG]

Yes, he's very sharp.
The amazing thing is how much the 8th Airforce managed to accomplish.
It's arguable that they won the war in Europe for us.

Maybe in Japan, but not Europe. Berlin was completely destroyed and Russia still had to go in there.

[Diamondback]

Maybe in Japan, but not Europe. Berlin was completely destroyed and Russia still had to go in there.

PTO was 20th AF for strategic work, though--the only numbered air force with TWO Bomber Commands because LeMay insisted that every B-29 America could build aside from stateside training birds and experimentals be routed to him personally.

Ordinary people forged by extraordinary circumstances to do extraordinary things. If the clock somehow rewound itself eighty years with the world's populace today having to step into our ancestors' roles, I bet a huge chunk wouldn't make it the first year--myself probably included.

[qsy]

Maybe in Japan, but not Europe. Berlin was completely destroyed and Russia still had to go in there.

One of the major reasons the Russians were able to get to Berlin was because there was no Luftwaffe. The primary result of the strategic bombing campaign was the diversion and destruction of the Luftwaffe.