If you're wondering how balls defy gravity.
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"There were some 200 B-17 bombers on the flight to Mannheim with us that day. Almost every day the 8th Air Force put up 1,000 bombers to hit four or five targets. When we reached the railroad marshaling yard that day, the flak from German 88s was very heavy.
We were hit. Both our starboard engines were out. Most of our tail section was shot away and both our wheels were also gone. There was a hole in the waist big enough for two men to walk through,
Immediately we started losing altitude for lack of power. We were also lagging behind the bomber squadron because we couldn’t maintain our air speed.
To compensate, we began chucking out everything that wasn’t nailed down. Our .50-caliber machine guns went, and so did all the ammunition for them. We threw out our steel helmets and our flak suits. We began dumping our extra fuel over the channel.
By the time we approached the White Cliffs of Dover, we could see below the carcasses of a number of other distressed airplanes that failed to maintain their altitude and never made it back.
There were a couple of hundred guys on the ground waiting for us to land. Ambulances and fire trucks were parked along the runway, too. We came in right over the farmhouse at the end of the runway.
At the controls was 1st Lt. Charles Martin from Tennessee, a cool 20-year-old pilot, who maintained the 115 mph air speed needed to keep the bomber flying until it was over the runway. Then he let it gently settle to the concrete.
When the props on the two port side engines hit the runway, we abruptly stopped and bent up under the engines. Sparks flew from the underbelly of the bomber as it scraped along the concrete at more than 90 mph. Eventually, we stopped just about the time it used up the length of the runway.
There was no fire and no explosion. The B-17 just sat crumpled and badly. Squadron members who watched from the sidelines were amazed at our crew’s good fortune.
Not a single member of our 8 man crew received a scratch on that flight. It was a miracle!" - T/Sgt Howard Dillingham, Waist Gunner, 2 Purple Hearts, bombing mission over Mannheim, Germany, Jan 24, 1945. #ww2 #hardfuck