12. The Turret Gunner of Snap! Crackle! Pop!
Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into WWII, Alan Eugene Magee (1919 – 2003) of Somerset, New Jersey, stepped up and joined the United States Army Air Forces. After he completed aerial gunnery training, he became a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress ball turret gunner and was sent to the Eighth Air Force in Britain. He joined the crew of a B-17 nicknamed Snap! Crackle! Pop! that was part of the 360th Bomb Squadron of the 303rd Bomb Group.
Magee’s seventh mission, on January 3rd, 1943, was a daylight raid against U-boat pens in Saint-Nazaire, France. Little did he know that it would end with him falling over 22,000 feet from his B-17, without a parachute. The ordeal began when Magee’s ball turret was struck by antiaircraft fire over Saint-Nazaire. The damage rendered the turret inoperative, so Magee exited – and discovered that the flak that had damaged his turret had also shredded his parachute. Before he had time to contemplate the implications, another flak hit destroyed the B-17’s right-wing. Then things got worse.