"Bang! Plexy glass in my left hand side exploded, my right hand side exploded, and a 20mm shell had come up through my turret, hitting me in the left arm, tearing my jacket off and smashing the bone. The same shell went up into the waist of the plane killing the gunner. I was trying to figure out what to do and I remembered my training in the Eagle scouts, and that saved my arm that day because I put on a torniquet and that stopped the blood loss. I was confined in the turret and flew like that for about 4.5 hours. It's 40 degrees below zero and when the blood flows out, it freezes, drops down and rolls around on the bottom of the turret. So I had to make sure that when we got at a lower altitude, I'd pick my frozen blood up and throw it out because if you didn't, it would melt and you'd have to mop it up when you got down." Earl Burke, 19 years old, B17 Ball Turret Gunner, 384th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force, raid over Schweinfurt, Germany Oct 1943. #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #ww2 #reality