At 6:15 on the morning of July 30th, 1943, Staff Sergeant Michael Aruth climbed through the narrow fuselage of AB17 called Tandlio and folded himself into the smallest, coldest corner of the aircraft.
Dawn over RAF Kimolton was gray and heavy, the kind of English morning that smelled of wet grass and engine oil.
In a few hours, that pale horizon would be far behind him, replaced by flack clouds and tracer fire somewhere over the heart of Nazi Germany.
He was 24 years old.
He had already flown 12 combat missions.
Three German fighters had fallen from the sky by his hand.
And now he settled onto a bicycle style seat in a compartment barely big enough to stretch his legs alone with 250 caliber machine guns and a sheet of plexiglass between himself and death.
The tail gunner’s world was 4 ft wide, 5 ft long, and colder than anything a man should endure.
At 25,000 ft, the air outside would fall to 60 below zero.
The electrically heated suit humming around his body was the only thing keeping his blood from freezing in his veins.
40 ft of aluminum separated him from the rest of the crew.
No voices, no footsteps, no one to help if something jammed or something broke.
The Eighth Air Force called it the loneliest job in the war, and the statistics proved it.
In the summer of 1943, a bomber crew survived an average of 11 missions before being killed, captured, or shot down.
Tail gunners died faster than almost anyone else.
German pilots knew exactly why.
Attacking from behind gave them the longest firing window, the cleanest shot, and the first chance to kill.
A Messormid diving in from 6:00 could fire for nearly 10 full seconds before flashing past the bomber.
10 seconds in which cannon shells tore through plexiglass, through flesh, through control cables.
Bombers without tail protection were doomed.
Fighters would circle back and finish them at leisure.
Training manuals told American gunners to wait.
Conserve ammunition.
fire only under 300 yd.
The theories sounded perfect in classrooms back in the states.
In the sky over Germany, 300 yd meant the enemy was already shooting.
Aruth had watched a man die that way.
On his sixth mission, AB17 off Tandlio’s wing took a direct hit in the tail.
The fighter came in fast and low.
The gunner never fired a shot.
The first rounds shattered the plexiglass and killed him instantly.
The bomber fell out of formation, trailing smoke.
Eight parachutes opened in the sky.
The tail gunner was not among them.
From that day on, Michael Aruth decided the manual was wrong.
By noon on July 30th, 186 B17s were clawing their way into the sky across eastern England, forming into long silver rivers headed east.
P 47 Thunderbolts took station beside them, but Aruth knew the math as well as any navigator.
The escorts would turn back over Belgium.
The last 200 m would be flown alone.
He checked his ammunition belts.
400 rounds per gun, 800 total.
Enough, the manual said, “For a standard mission.” He had already decided the manual was wrong about that, too.
They crossed the channel at 14,000 ft.
White cliffs faded behind them.
France slid beneath the formation.
The P47s wagged their wings and turned back.
From here on out, every mile belonged to the Luwaffa.
Aruth had learned to fire early.
Where doctrine said wait, he shot at 700 yd.
Where instructors said conserve, he spent ammunition like it meant nothing.
A fighter flying straight at him presented the largest target it would ever offer.
Fire early, walk the tracers in, forced the pilot to break before he could aim.
Yes, it burned ammunition, but a dead gunner had no use for full belts.
On an earlier mission at St.
Nazir, he had opened fire at extreme range.
The German pilot had broken away without firing a shot.
200 rounds gone, but Tandlio came home untouched.
Now over Belgium, the sky behind them began to fill.
At 11:42, the first fighters appeared, climbing in groups of four, 8, 12.
Then too many to count.
Black crosses on yellow noses rose toward the formation like sharks from the deep.
The lead fighter dived from high 6:00.
Aruth tracked it calmly, waiting only long enough to be sure of his line, then squeezed both triggers.
Tracers reached out across empty sky, falling short, then climbing, then suddenly sparking along the fighter’s cowling.
The German pilot broke hard right, smoke trailing behind him and vanished into the clouds.
Another came in low.
A Ruth depressed his guns to their limits and fired a long burst.
The pilot flinched and released his shells harmlessly into empty air above the bomber.
447 minutes.
The sky was nothing but engines, fire, and falling airplanes.
At 12:29, fighter flew straight and level toward his guns as if daring him.
Aruth held the triggers down for six full seconds.
Over a 100 rounds slammed into the aircraft.
The Messormid came apart in midair, wings folding backward, engine tearing free.
It tumbled past so close he could see the empty cockpit.
Two confirmed kills.
180 rounds left.
Then came the bombing run.
For 11 minutes, the bombers flew straight and level, the most dangerous posture imaginable.
The fighters attacked with renewed fury.
A faka wolf dove from 5:00 and hit Tandlio hard.
Cannon fragments exploded through the plexiglass.
Aruth felt the impact before the pain.
Shrapnel ripped into his arm and shoulder.
Hydraulic fluid sprayed the compartment.
His left gun jammed.
He kept firing with his right.
Bleeding onehanded, frozen.
A final burst tore the German fighter apart.
Three kills, 63 rounds left.
They turned for home, but the mission was only half over.
German fighters regrouped for the return gauntlet.
Aruth wrapped a scarf around his arm and waited.
At 1:31, two fighters closed from 7:00.
He waited until 500 yd, fired 12 careful rounds, and watched the lead aircraft roll inverted and dive away trailing coolant.
The wingmen broke off.
By the time they reached France, the attacks faded.
At 3:52, they landed in England.
Aruth could not climb out of his compartment.
Medics carried him away.
11 wounds, three confirmed kills, two probables.
The intelligence officers took notes.
Within weeks, other gunners were trying his method.
Survival rates rose.
Damage fell.
Reports filtered upward through command channels.
By autumn, official doctrine quietly changed.
Tail gunners were authorized to fire early.
Michael Aruth flew again.
On September 6th, the target was Stoutgart.
Deep, heavily defended.
The longest penetration of the month.
He loaded 1,200 rounds.
The fighters met them over France.
The attacks built and built until more than a 100 interceptors swarmed the formation.
A Ruth opened fire again and again, breaking up attacks, knocking one fighter smoking out of the sky.
Then a wolf came out of the sun.
The shells shattered his left gun and tore into his scalp and arms.
Blood blinded him.
Tandlio was dying around him.
They bombed the target.
They could not reach home.
Over the channel, the pilots ditched the bomber into gray water.
The fuselage broke apart.
Darkness took him.
He woke in a raft.
British rescue boats approaching.
All 10 survived.
Weeks later, the distinguished service cross arrived.
Then the distinguished flying cross.
Then the purple heart.
His technique became policy.
His methods spread across the eighth air force.
17 confirmed kills.
Then headaches, vision problems.
The doctors grounded him.
He trained others.
Quietly, carefully, passing on what he had learned.
After the war, he stayed in uniform, retiring in 1962.
He rarely spoke of combat.
The medals stayed in a drawer.
He died in 1990.
His headstone lists only his name, his rank, and his war.
But somewhere in archives, in mission reports, in fading gun camera film, the story remains of a young man alone in the coldest corner of a flying fortress who decided that waiting was killing men and proved that sometimes survival belongs to those willing to break the rules.
