Just Surviving Somehow
Though they were all on their own, the crew fought back with fury, their machine guns taking down as many as three of the fighters. They did pay the price, however. The tail gunner, wedged into the narrow and exposed tail, was shot through the head and neck and died in the air. Another crew member took a ricocheting shell to the eye. Brown, the pilot was hit in the shoulder.
On top of these injuries, the bomber was in serious trouble. Essentially all the services were offline, from electrical to wing flaps. The crew was now more vulnerable to the freezing and low-oxygen air at the high altitude. One of the ball-turret gunners suffered frostbite after shrapnel blew holes in the framework and exposing him to a fierce rush of freezing air. In the little time, the rest of the crew had to perform first aid, they were again met with horrible luck when they saw that the morphine had frozen solid.
Unable to take anymore with the combination of blood loss and low oxygen, Charlie Brown passed out as the bomber with its damaged engines and flaps spiraled out of control. The German’s left, assuming the bomber was destined to crash into the forests below. Except it didn’t; Brown came to and saw an endless field of trees, a sure sign that he needed to pull up. Leveling out, the exhausted crew slowly gained altitude and headed back to Britain.
It was at this moment that Franz Stigler spotted the bomber. Stigler was waiting to rearm and refuel on a nearby airfield. Locked and loaded, he set out to get the kill that would give him the coveted Knight’s Cross. As Stigler came upon the Bomber in a perfect approach towards the tail, he saw the devastation that had been brought upon the crippled plane.
The Ye Olde Pub had lost the rudder and elevator from the tail, had one engine failed and the others struggling to plug along. Bullet holes were everywhere and concentrations of shots had torn away huge swaths of the B-17, revealing a few of the crew. Stigler first noticed the deceased tail gunner and would see more wounded men as he pulled forward to see the shattered nose cone and the bloody and slumping Charlie Brown.