At on the morning of the 29th of November 1943, Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran sat in the most isolated position on a Boeing B17 flying fortress, staring through his gun site at a sky filling with enemy aircraft.
19 years old from a Wisconsin dairy farm.
This was his introduction to combat over one of Germany’s most defended industrial centers.
The Eighth Air Force had dispatched more than 300 heavy bombers toward Breman that morning.
In the first 60 minutes over target, six fortresses had already been blown from formation.
Moran watched them fall, counting parachutes, wondering how many men made it out.
His station at the extreme rear of the bomber separated him from his nine crew mates by 40 ft of aluminum fuselage.
Two Browning M2 machine guns were his only companions.
those weapons and whatever was coming at him from behind.
The B17 carried pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit.
Navigator and bombardier occupied the glazed nose.
Flight engineer manned the top turret.
Radio operator worked behind the bomb bay.
Two waist gunners stood at open windows.
Ball turret gunner hung beneath the belly and Moran sat alone at the tail watching their six.
His assignment was straightforward.
defend the aircraft’s most exposed angle.
Luftvafa tacticians had identified early that approaching a fortress from directly a stern placed attacking fighters in only one man’s firing arc that made the tail gunner’s position both critical and deadly.
By late 1943, bomber losses over Germany had reached catastrophic levels.
The Schweinford raid 2 months prior had cost 60 flying fortresses in a single afternoon.
600 air crew killed or captured.
Veterans called deep penetration missions milk runs to hell.
Air crews needed 25 completed missions to rotate home.
Statistical analysis showed the average crew survived 15.
Some groups were losing half their aircraft strength monthly.
Moran had enlisted the morning of his 18th birthday.
Growing up near Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, he’d watched aircraft pass overhead and imagined flying.
The Army Air Forces needed gunners desperately.
Young men with fast reactions and steady hands.
Farm boys who understood shooting.
Gunnery school taught him to track fastmoving targets while compensating for wind, altitude, and aircraft speed.
He learned controlled bursts to prevent barrel overheating.
He memorized enemy silhouettes until he could identify a Messormid BF-9 or Faulk Wolf 190 at 2,000 yd.
But no training prepared anyone for combat at altitude over Germany.
Temperatures at 24,000 ft dropped to 40 below zero.
The thin air made every movement exhausting and German fighters came in coordinated waves, firing 20 mm cannons that could shred aluminum like tissue paper.
Ricky Tickavi had lifted off from Snderton Heath that morning as part of the 96th bombardment group.
Their target was Bremen, shipyards, aircraft plants, submarine facilities.
One of the most heavily defended cities in the Reich.
The formations crossed the North Sea in tight defensive boxes.
Each fortress positioned to create overlapping fields of fire.
Theory said pack the bombers close so combined firepower could drive off fighters.
Reality was that a direct hit on one aircraft often damaged those flying beside it.
Bremen’s anti-aircraft batteries opened up as formations approached.
Black bursts of flack filled the sky.
The bombers couldn’t maneuver.
They had to maintain straight and level flight for the bomb run.
Moran watched a fortress in the formation ahead take a direct hit.
The aircraft folded in half and dropped.
Ricky Tickavi released its ordinance over target.
4,000 lb of high explosives tumbling toward the industrial facilities below.
Mission accomplished.
Now they just had to survive the return flight.
The formation began its turn toward England.
200 miles of hostile airspace between them and safety.
That is when their number two engine took a direct flack hit.
The propeller windmilled uselessly.
The aircraft began losing speed.
A damaged bomber falling behind formation was a death sentence.
German fighter pilots watched for stragglers like wolves watching a herd.
A lone fortress without concentrated defensive fire was easy prey.
Morren saw them coming.
A dozen Messor Schmidts climbing from below.
Another group of fwols diving from above.
Ricky Ticky Tavi was about to fight alone.
And in the tail gunner position, Eugene Moran would face them first.
The initial messers came in from low, directly behind and beneath the bomber.
Moran pressed against the steel armor plate and squeezed both triggers.
His Twin 50s roared.
Tracers stre toward the fighter.
The German pilot broke off and rolled away, but there were more, many more.
The wolves attacked in coordinated pairs.
One drew the gunner’s attention while the other lined up a killing shot.
Moran swung his weapons from target to target.
Spent brass piled around his knees.
Cordet filled the cramped compartment.
At 24,000 ft, temperature inside the aircraft was 43 below zero.
Moran wore an electrically heated suit, but cold still penetrated.
His breath formed ice crystals on his oxygen mask.
The guns grew hot from continuous firing while his fingers went numb.
The German pilots were professionals.
Luftwafa veterans fighting since Poland in 1939.
They knew exactly how to kill a flying fortress.
Target the engines first, then eliminate the gunners.
Finally, poor cannon fire into the fuselage until something vital failed.
Moran heard impacts before he felt them.
20 mm cannon shells punching through aluminum.
The sound of metal tearing.
Somewhere forward, one waste gunner stopped firing.
then the other.
The intercom filled with static and fragmented voices.
The bomber shuddered as more rounds struck.
He kept firing.
There was nothing else to do.
A flockwolf came in from .
Moran swung his guns and pressed the triggers.
The fighter’s wing disintegrated.
It spiraled downward, trailing black smoke.
His first confirmed kill.
He didn’t have time to celebrate.
Cannon rounds ripped through the tail section.
Moran felt something slam into his left forearm, then his right.
Both arms had been hit.
Blood soaked through his flight suit sleeves.
The pain was immediate and intense, but his hands still worked.
He could still grip the triggers, more impacts.
The vertical stabilizer above him took multiple hits.
Control cables snapped and whipped through the air.
The tail section began vibrating violently.
Moran glanced down at his parachute.
Every airman wore one.
The silk canopy and a canvas container strapped to his chest.
If the bomber went down, that parachute was his only chance.
He saw holes in the fabric.
Multiple holes.
Cannon rounds had shredded it.
His parachute was useless.
If he had to bail out, he would fall four miles to his death.
The attack continued.
German fighters made pass after pass.
Moran counted at least 15 circling the crippled bomber.
Ricky Tickavi was bleeding altitude and speed.
The remaining engines strained to keep the aircraft airborne.
Forward in the nose, navigator Jesse Orrison was still alive.
He’d been wounded but remained conscious.
The pilot and co-pilot were both dead at controls.
Flight engineer dead in his turret.
Radio operator dead.
Ball turret gunner dead.
Waste gunners dead.
Of the 10 men who’d taken off from England that morning, only two were still breathing.
Orrison in the nose.
Moran in the tail.
40 ft of shattered fuselage between them.
Another cannon round struck the bomber.
This one hit something critical.
Moran felt the aircraft lurch.
A grinding sound echoed through the airframe.
The vibration intensified until his teeth rattled.
Then came a sound he would never forget.
The shriek of tearing aluminum.
The scream of structural failure.
Ricky Ticky Tavi was breaking apart.
The fuselage split just forward of the tail section.
Moran watched the front of the aircraft separate and fall away.
The wings, the engines, the cockpit, the bodies of his crew mates all tumbling toward the German countryside 4 mi below.
He was alone now, trapped in a severed tail section, wounded in both arms.
His parachute destroyed 24,000 ft above enemy territory, falling.
Terminal velocity for a human body is approximately 120 m per hour.
The tail section of a flying fortress weighed several thousand lb.
It would fall faster, much faster.
Eugene Moran had perhaps 90 seconds to live.
The severed tail section tumbled through the sky.
It spun end over end, throwing Moran against the walls.
His wounded arms screamed with pain.
Blood sprayed across the interior.
Wind howled through the torn fuselage.
Moran should have been paralyzed with terror.
He should have curled into a ball and waited for death.
Instead, he did something that defied all logic.
He kept fighting.
The German fighters were still circling.
They saw the tail section falling and moved closer.
Perhaps they wanted to confirm the kill.
Perhaps they were curious.
Whatever their reason, they made a fatal mistake.
They flew within range of a wounded tail gunner who refused to die.
Moran grabbed his machine guns.
The spinning tail section made aiming nearly impossible.
Gforces pressed him against his seat, then threw him toward the ceiling.
His arms were bleeding.
His parachute was destroyed.
He was falling four miles to certain death, and he was still shooting.
Tracers arked wildly through the sky as the tail section rotated.
The German pilots scattered.
They had never seen anything like this.
A man in a falling coffin firing back with everything he had.
One Messor Schmidt took hits across his fuselage.
The pilot broke off and dove toward the ground, trailing smoke.
The altimeter was shattered, but Morand could see the ground growing larger through gaps in the torn metal.
fields, forests, roads, German farmland rushing up to meet him.
The tail sections aerodynamics saved his life.
The vertical and horizontal stabilizers acted like crude wings.
They caught air and created drag.
Instead of plummeting straight down, the wreckage began to glide.
The spinning slowed.
The descent became almost controlled.
Almost.
Moran estimated he was falling at approximately 100 ft per second.
fast enough to kill him on impact, but slower than a human body in freef fall.
The stabilizers were buying him time.
Time he used to keep firing at any German fighter that came close.
The ground was 5,000 ft below, then 3,000, then 1,000.
Morren braced himself against the steel armor plate.
He wrapped his wounded arms around the ammunition boxes.
There was nothing else to hold on to.
The tail section struck the top of a pine tree at approximately 100 m per hour.
The impact snapped branches as thick as a man’s arm.
The vertical stabilizer caught on a trunk and tore away.
The wreckage cart wheeled through the forest canopy, shedding pieces of aluminum with each impact.
Moran’s head slammed into the steel framework above him.
His vision exploded into white light.
He felt his ribs crack.
Both arms bent at angles they were never designed to bend.
The tail section hit another tree, spun sideways, and crashed into the frozen ground.
Then silence.
Eugene Moran was alive barely.
He lay in the wreckage, unable to move.
Both forearms were broken in multiple places.
Compound fractures with bone protruding through skin.
His ribs were shattered.
Every breath brought stabbing pain.
Blood poured from a wound on his head where a piece of his skull had been torn away.
His brain was partially exposed to the freezing air.
The crash site was in a forest near the German town of Bassam, 15 mi south of Bremen, enemy territory.
Moran was surrounded by people who just watched American bombs destroy their factories.
He tried to move.
His legs responded weakly.
His arms were useless.
The cold was already seeping into his body.
Hypothermia would kill him within hours if his wounds didn’t kill him first.
Moran crawled toward the opening where the tail section had separated.
Each movement sent waves of agony through his broken body.
He pulled himself onto the frozen ground and looked up at the gray German sky.
He had survived a four-mile fall without a parachute.
One of only a handful of men in the entire war who would accomplish this feat.
But survival meant nothing if he bled to death in a German forest.
Voices echoed through the trees.
German voices.
Soldiers coming to investigate the crash.
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Back to Moran.
The German soldiers emerged from the trees with rifles raised.
They surrounded the wreckage and stared at the American lying in the snow.
One shouted orders.
Another ran back toward the road to summon an officer.
Moran couldn’t resist.
He couldn’t fight.
He could barely breathe.
The soldiers searched him roughly, ignoring his screams as they moved his shattered arms.
They found his dog tags, his rank insignia, his ruined parachute.
They left him lying on the frozen ground while they examined the tail section.
An officer arrived within the hour.
He looked at Moran’s wounds and shook his head.
The American was clearly dying.
Transporting him seemed pointless, but orders were orders.
Downed airmen were to be captured and interrogated if possible.
They loaded Moran onto a wooden cart.
No stretcher, no blankets, no medical attention.
The cart bounced along frozen roads for hours.
Every jolt sent fresh agony through his broken ribs and fractured arms.
The wound on his skull had stopped bleeding, but only because the cold had frozen the blood into a dark crust.
The cart delivered him to a German military facility.
His vision blurred.
Consciousness came and went in waves.
He remembered being carried inside.
He remembered lying on a concrete floor.
He remembered German voices discussing him as if he were already a corpse.
No doctor came, no medic, no one offered water or bandages or morphine.
The Germans had limited medical supplies and weren’t about to waste them on an enemy airman who would probably die anyway.
Moran lay on that concrete floor for two days.
His wounds became infected.
The exposed brain tissue began to swell.
His broken arms turned purple and black.
Gangrine was setting in.
Without surgery, he would lose both limbs.
Without antibiotics, the infection would spread.
Without intervention, he had perhaps 48 hours to live.
On the third day, Moran was transported again.
Another agonizing journey over frozen roads, this time to a prisoner of war hospital, a converted building where wounded Allied airmen were held until they recovered enough to be sent to permanent camps.
The hospital was understaffed and under supplied.
German military doctors performed triage.
Those with survivable wounds received treatment.
Those deemed beyond saving were left to die.
Morren’s injuries placed him firmly in the second category, but the hospital held a secret.
Among the prisoners were two Serbian doctors, military physicians captured on the Eastern Front.
They’d been pressed into service treating wounded pals, performing surgeries with inadequate equipment, and almost no anesthesia.
The Serbian doctors examined Moran and made a decision.
They would try to save him.
Not because anyone ordered them to, not because they had the proper tools, simply because he was a wounded man and they were physicians.
The surgery lasted 7 hours.
They worked with instruments designed for field operations.
No proper anesthesia, only local numbing agents that barely dulled the pain.
Moran drifted in and out of consciousness as they set his broken bones with metal pins and wire.
They cleaned infected tissue from his wounds.
They removed bone fragments from his skull and covered the exposed brain with what tissue they could salvage.
They attached a metal plate to Moron’s head, crude by modern standards, effective enough to keep him alive.
They splinted his arms with wooden boards and wrapped them in bandages torn from sheets.
They did everything possible with almost nothing available.
When the surgery was over, they told him the truth.
The next 72 hours would determine whether he lived or died.
His body had to fight off the infection.
His bones had to begin healing.
His brain had to avoid swelling further.
There was nothing more they could do.
Eugene Moran’s survival now depended entirely on his own will to live.
The fever came the first night.
Moran’s temperature climbed to 104°.
His body shook with violent chills despite the sweat pouring from his skin.
The Serbian doctors monitored him as closely as their limited resources allowed.
They changed his bandages.
They forced water between his cracked lips.
They waited.
The doctors had cleaned Moran’s wounds as thoroughly as they could, but bacteria had already entered his bloodstream.
His immune system was fighting a war inside his own body.
The second night was worse.
[__] slipped into delirium.
He called out for his mother.
He screamed warnings to crew mates who were already dead.
He relived the moment when Ricky Tickavi broke apart, his unconscious mind replaying the trauma over and over.
The Serbian doctors took turns sitting with him.
They had no medicine to offer, only cold cloths pressed against his burning forehead.
Only whispered encouragement in accented English.
He probably couldn’t hear.
On the third morning, the fever broke.
Moren opened his eyes and recognized his surroundings for the first time in days.
He was alive.
The infection had not killed him.
His body had won the battle that medicine could not fight.
The Serbian doctors examined his wounds and found the first signs of healing.
The tissue around his skull plate was beginning to close.
The broken bones in his arms were starting to knit together.
Recovery would take months.
The damage to his body was extensive.
But Eugene Moran was going to survive.
Word spread through the hospital.
The American who fell four miles without a parachute.
The tail gunner who kept shooting as his bomber disintegrated.
The man who should have died a dozen times but refused to stop breathing.
German guards came to look at him.
Other prisoners asked to hear his story.
Even the hospital administrators seemed impressed by his impossible survival.
6 weeks after the crash, Moran could walk again.
His arms remained in splints.
The metal plate in his skull caused constant headaches.
His ribs achd with every breath.
But he was mobile.
He was conscious.
He would spend the next 17 months as a prisoner of war.
He would survive the hell ship.
He would survive the black march across a collapsing Reich.
He would walk 600 m through frozen roads and blizzards.
He would watch other prisoners die around him and refuse to join them.
But he had already done the impossible.
He had fallen four miles without a parachute and lived to tell about it.
He had kept shooting all the way down.
He had refused to die when death was certain.
Eugene Moran returned to Wisconsin after the war.
He married, raised nine children, worked his farm.
He rarely spoke about the war.
The experiences were too painful, the losses too profound.
He died in 2014 at age 89.
Seven decades had passed since the day German flack cut his bomber in half and sent him tumbling four miles toward Earth.
Seven decades since he kept firing his machine guns while the world spun around him.
Seven decades since Serbian doctors saved his life with crude tools and impossible skill.
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