21,000 ft above the Mediterranean Sea, Staff Sergeant Benjamin Warmer presses his face against the freezing plexiglass of his B17 Flying Fortress.
Through the morning haze of July 5th, 1943, he counts them.
20 fighters, then 40, then 60, then more keep coming.
100 Luftvafa fighters, Faka Wolf FW190s and Messersmidt BF1009s swarm toward the 27 bombers of the 99th bomb group like hornets defending their nest.
The formation is headed for Gerbini airfield in Sicily, a strategic target that must be destroyed before the Allied invasion of the island can proceed in 4 days.
Warmer’s hands grip the spade handles of his 50 caliber Browning M2 machine gun at the right waist position.
The 22-year-old from San Francisco has flown 11 missions.
He’s seen fighter attacks before, but nothing like this.
The German pilots know what’s at stake.
If Jerbini falls, Sicily falls.
If Sicily falls, Italy falls.
They’re going to throw everything they have at these B17s to turn them back.
What Warmer doesn’t know, what none of the gunners in the formation know, is that in the next 30 minutes, the rules of aerial combat are about to be rewritten.
Not by tactics, not by technology, but by one man with standardissue equipment doing something that shouldn’t be possible.
The statistics are brutally clear.
Bomber gunner claims are notoriously inflated.
Analysis after the war would show that for every enemy fighter actually destroyed.
Gunners claimed an average of seven, getting five confirmed kills over an entire combat tour was rare enough to earn ACE status.
Seven kills in a single mission impossible.
Except Benjamin Warmer is about to do exactly that.
The Luftvafa fighters begin their attack runs.
The first wave comes in from 12:00 high.
Head-on attacks designed to kill pilots and knock out nose guns before the formation reaches the target.
Warmer watches tracers streak past his window.
The B7 shutters as cannon shells punch through aluminum skin 20 miles to Gerbini.
The formation must hold together.
The formation must reach the target.
And Benjamin Warmer, a former FBI bodyguard with no special training and no exceptional credentials, is about to prove that sometimes the difference between victory and death comes down to one man who simply refuses to miss.
The first FW190 rolls into position off his right wing.
He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s already a dead man aiming.
To understand what’s about to happen at 21,000 ft, you need to understand the mathematics of death that ruled bomber operations in 1943.
The 99th bomb group, nicknamed the Diamondbacks, has been flying combat missions from North Africa since March 31st, 1943.
They’re part of the fifth bombardment wing, 12th Air Force, tasked with strangling Axis supply lines across the Mediterranean.
Every mission is a calculated risk.
Every sorty bleeds men and machines.
The survival statistics are grim.
In the summer of 1943, the average bomber crew has a one in4 chance of completing their 25 mission tour.
Ball turret gunners face mortality rates approaching 60%.
The life expectancy of a B7 over occupied Europe is measured in missions, not months.
By June, the 99th is already wearing sidearms constantly due to threats of Arab uprisings around their base at Naverin, Algeria.
The crews face not just German fighters and flack, but sabotage, supply shortages, and summer dust storms that make life miserable on the ground.
The B17F flying fortress is supposed to be the solution.
With 1350 caliber machine guns, twin guns in the nose, top turret, ball turret tail, and single guns at both waist positions.
It’s called a flying fortress for a reason.
The theory is simple.
Tight defensive formations create overlapping fields of fire that shred attacking fighters.
Daylight precision bombing will destroy Germany’s war machine while minimizing civilian casualties.
The reality is bloodier.
Luftvafa pilots have learned to exploit blind spots.
They’ve learned that head-on attacks give gunners only seconds to acquire targets.
They’ve learned that if you press attacks hard enough, close enough, some bombers will break formation.
And once a bomber breaks formation, it’s dead.
The experts at 12th Air Force headquarters know Gerbini will be the toughest target yet.
Intelligence estimates 100 fighters based at and around the complex.
Every one of them will scramble to defend it.
The mission planners know that bombers will be lost.
They’ve already accepted that some crews won’t come home.
What they don’t accept is failure.
Gerbini must be destroyed.
The invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky is scheduled for July 9th.
If those German fighters can oppose the invasion, Allied troops landing at Jala and other beaches will be slaughtered.
The 99th must penetrate enemy defenses.
They must drop their bombs, whatever the cost.
Benjamin Warmer understands the stakes, but his mind is on simpler things.
Stay alive for the next 30 minutes.
Protect his crew.
Hit what he aims at.
He’s not a career military man.
Before the war, he worked as an FBI bodyguard for Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthaw.
He knows how to stay alert.
He knows how to assess threats.
But nothing in his background suggests he’s about to become the first enlisted man in US Army Air Force’s history to achieve ACE status in a single mission.
The waste gunner position he occupies is hardly prestigious.
It’s one of the crudest gun positions on the aircraft.
Essentially a 50 caliber machine gun on a flexible mount positioned at an open window in the fuselage.
The temperature at altitude is 40° below zero.
The noise is deafening.
The 200 mph slipstream fights every movement of the 65lb gun.
Waste gunners don’t have computing gun sights.
They don’t have turret mechanisms to help track targets.
They have their eyes, their hands, and their instincts.
Most waste gunners are lucky to get even one confirmed kill in their entire combat tour.
As the formation approaches the Sicilian coast at 8:47 a.m., Warmer performs his pre-combat checks.
Ammunition belts fed properly, gun charging handles cycled, oxygen mask secure.
He looks across the cramped fuselage at the left waist gunner.
They exchange a nod.
The British Spitfires that escorted them from Malta are turning back.
Their fuel won’t last over the target.
From here, the B17s are on their own.
The swarm of black dots on the horizon begins to grow larger.
Staff Sergeant Benjamin F.
Warmer 3 is not supposed to be a hero.
At 22 years old, he’s got a job to do and a crew to protect.
That’s it.
He’s not a fighter ace with a college degree and officer’s bars.
He’s not a hotshot pilot with a nickname and a painted scoreboard on his fuselage.
He’s a sergeant who stands at an open window with a machine gun getting paid $9 a month to shoot at things trying to kill him.
But Warmer has something that can’t be taught in gunnery school at Kingman, Arizona.
He has what gunners call the gift, an almost pternatural ability to calculate deflection angles in his head while a fighter screams past at a closing speed of 500 mph.
Most gunners spray and pray.
They open fire at 600 yd and hold the trigger until the fighter breaks off or they run out of ammunition.
The training manual says to aim where the target will be, not where it is.
But at combat speeds, human reaction time makes that almost impossible.
By the time your brain processes where to aim, the geometry has changed.
Warmer has figured out something different.
He watches the Luftvafa fighters setting up for their attack runs.
They’re not random.
They’re following patterns, specific approach angles that keep them out of the tail gunner’s field of fire while allowing their forward-facing guns to rake the B7 from nose to tail.
The FW190s are particularly aggressive.
Armed with four 20 mm cannons and two machine guns, they can shred a B17’s wing or cockpit in a two-cond burst.
Warmer tracks the first fighter through his window.
It’s coming in at 2:00, slightly high.
He knows from experience that the pilot will roll slightly to bring his guns to bear, then fire at about 300 yd before breaking underneath the formation.
Instead of aiming at the fighter, Warmer aims at the point in space where the fighter will be when his bullets arrive.
It’s pure geometry.
Two objects in motion converging on a single point.
He’s accounting for bullet drop, air speed, the B17’s own movement, and the fighter’s attack angle.
And he’s doing all of it in the 3 seconds between visual acquisition and firing.
His finger tightens on the trigger.
The Browning M2 roars to life, cycling 800 rounds per minute.
Each 50 caliber bullet weighs nearly 2 oz and travels at 2,900 ft per second.
Warmer fires in controlled bursts, two 3 seconds maximum, to prevent the barrel from overheating and to conserve ammunition.
The FW190 flies directly into his stream of tracers.
Warmer sees pieces fly off the fighter’s wing.
Smoke erupts from the engine cowling.
The FW190 rolls inverted and drops away, trailing flame.
One, he doesn’t celebrate.
doesn’t even take his eyes off the sky because two more fighters are already setting up for their attack runs.
The left waist gunner is shouting something.
Warmer can’t hear over the wind noise and gun blast.
Doesn’t matter.
He’s already tracking the next target.
His world narrows to angles and timing and trigger pressure.
What happens next would be dismissed as Hollywood fiction if it weren’t documented in missing air crew report 1133 and witnessed by dozens of air crew.
The Luftvafa fighters attack in waves three, four, five at a time.
They’re desperate.
They know that if the 99th bomb group reaches Gerbini and destroys the airfield, dozens of German fighters will have nowhere to land.
Pilots who survive the aerial battle will die in crash landings or run out of fuel over the Mediterranean.
So they press the attacks closer than doctrine recommends.
Some come within 100 yards dangerously close where a collision could destroy both aircraft.
Warmer meets them headon, not with courage, not with bravery, with cold mechanical precision.
The second FW190 comes in from 4:00 firing.
Warmer sees the muzzle flashes from the fighter wing-mounted cannons.
20 mm shells explode against the B17’s fuselage.
The bomber shutters.
Somewhere behind him, someone screams.
Warmer leads the target.
Fires.
The burst walks across the fighter’s cockpit.
The plexiglass canopy shatters.
The FW190 flips nose down and spins away.
Two, a BF 109 tries a diving attack from above.
Warmer elevates his gun against the slipstream, fighting the 200 mph wind resistance.
At this angle, the weapon wants to be pushed down.
He has to physically force it upward while simultaneously tracking the target and compensating for deflection.
He fires, misses, fires again.
The second burst clips the 109’s tail.
The fighter wobbles, loses control, and spirals down.
Three, his hands are numb from cold and vibration.
The gun mount is slick with hydraulic fluid from damaged systems.
Elsewhere in the aircraft, shell casings pile up around his boots.
The noise is beyond deafening.
It’s a physical thing that pounds his chest and makes his teeth rattle.
Another FW190.
This one smarter.
It comes in from below where Warmer’s gun can barely depress far enough to engage.
He drops to one knee, twists the gun down as far as the mount allows, and fires blind.
Pure instinct.
The fighter pulls up directly in front of his tracers.
Smoke fire.
The canopy blows off as the pilot ejects.
The pilotless FW90 cartwheels through the formation.
Four.
Time becomes elastic.
Warmer has no idea if seconds or minutes have passed.
His world is the gun, the sky, and the endless stream of German fighters determined to kill him.
Two more FW1is make coordinated attacks from opposite sides.
This is the nightmare scenario.
Waist gunners can only cover one side at a time, but the left waist gunner is engaging one fighter, and Warmer trusts him to handle it.
He focuses on his target, lid, fire.
The FW190’s engine explodes.
The fighter rolls inverted, trying to disengage.
Warmer follows it with his gun, firing, firing until it breaks apart.
Five.
And then six.
And then impossible.
Unbelievable.
Seven.
Seven confirmed kills in one mission in less than 30 minutes.
When the fighters finally break off, when the formation reaches Gerbini and drops its bombs, Benjamin Warmer’s hands won’t stop shaking.
The wheels of Benjamin Warmer’s B17 haven’t even stopped rolling at Naverin Field.
When word spreads, the ground crews hear it first from the crew chiefs doing post-flight inspections.
The armament crews count the empty shell casings.
Over 1,000 rounds expended from the right waist gun alone.
Then the witnesses start talking.
The pilot, the left waist gunner, the ball turret gunner who watched from below as fighter after fighter fell away, trailing smoke.
The tail gunner who saw at least three confirmed kills from his position.
the top turret gunner who was too busy fighting off his own attackers to keep count, but knows what he saw was impossible.
Seven fighters in one mission by one gunner.
The intelligence officers don’t believe it.
Not at first.
They’ve heard inflated claims before.
Every battle brings a flood of probables and damaged reports that never pan out.
The standing joke is that if bomber gunner’s claims were accurate, the Luftwaffa would have run out of fighters by Christmas 1942.
But this is different.
This has multiple witnesses.
And three B17s were shot down on that mission, piloted by Deain, Davis, and Graham.
Their burning wrecks witnessed falling near Gerbini by other crew members.
21 men dead or captured.
The Germans threw everything they had at the formation.
The debriefing room at Navern Field erupts in argument.
Intelligence officers cross reference reports.
They plot fighter positions based on witness statements.
They review gun camera footage from the handful of aircraft equipped with cameras.
The documentation is meticulous because this claim is extraordinary.
That’s impossible.
One intelligence officer says, “Bomber gunners don’t get ACE status.
That’s for fighter pilots.
Check the math.” Another responds, “We have seven separate witnesses confirming at least five kills.
Multiple sources put it at seven.” The debate goes on for hours.
Warmer himself sits through it, exhausted, his hands still trembling from adrenaline and cold.
He doesn’t argue, doesn’t embellish, just tells what happened point by point, target by target.
Then Colonel Fay R.
Up the Grove.
Commander of the 99th Bomb Group walks in.
The room falls silent.
Up the Grove has reviewed the reports.
He’s talked to the witnesses.
He’s seen the gun camera footage that corroborates at least five kills, possibly more.
Gentlemen, up the Grove says quietly, “Staff Sergeant Warmer is being recommended for the Distinguished Service Cross, and he’s going to get it.” If you’re enjoying this deep dive into one of World War II’s most extraordinary combat actions, hit that subscribe button and ring the bell.
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The award citation is written within days.
It reads in part, “Staff Sergeant Benjamin F.
Warmer distinguished himself uh by extraordinary heroism in action against the enemy during an aerial combat mission over Gerbini, Sicily on 5th of July 1943.
Despite intense anti-aircraft fire and overwhelming enemy fighter opposition, Sergeant Warmer displayed exceptional skill and courage, shooting down seven enemy aircraft and contributing materially to the success of the mission.
Seven confirmed kills in one mission.
The first enlisted man in US Army Air Force’s history to achieve ACE status in a single day.
The news spreads beyond the 99th bomb group.
Newspapers back home pick up the story.
Benjamin Warmer’s wife, Helen, receives telegrams of congratulations.
The Army Air Force’s public relations office wants interviews, photos, news reel coverage.
Warmer wants none of it.
He’s uncomfortable with the attention.
He’s just a sergeant doing his job.
There are men who didn’t come home from Gerbini.
Good men in those three B17s that went down.
21 names on the casualty list.
How is he supposed to celebrate while their families receive Western Union telegrams? But the war machine needs heroes.
It needs proof that American fighting men can win against impossible odds.
It needs Benjamin Warmer’s story to show that the daylight bombing campaign isn’t just sending crews to their deaths.
It’s destroying the enemy’s ability to make war.
So, Warmer accepts the distinguished service cross.
He poses for the photos and then he goes back to his B17, back to his gun position and flies the next mission because the war is far from over and the Luftvafa hasn’t forgotten what happened at Gerbini.
July 5th, 1943 becomes a turning point for the 99th Bomb Group, but not in the way anyone expected.
For that single mission, the group receives its first distinguished unit citation, the highest award a military unit can receive.
The citation specifically notes that despite an estimated 100 enemy fighters making repetitive and fierce attacks, the 99th penetrated enemy defenses and destroyed Gerbini airfield.
The numbers tell the story.
The 99th lost three B17s, a 10% loss rate in a single mission, but they successfully bombed the target.
When Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, begins 4 days later on July 9th, Luftvafa air opposition over the beaches is significantly reduced.
Hundreds of Allied soldiers survived the landings because German fighters that should have strafed them were instead destroyed at Gerbini or left without an operational airfield.
Benjamin Warmer’s seven confirmed kills on that mission represent roughly 7% of all enemy fighters engaged.
One man, one gun, seven enemy aircraft that will never attack another Allied bomber or strafe another landing craft.
The tactical implications ripple through the 12th Air Force.
Gunnery training is reviewed.
Warmer’s technique, leading targets more aggressively, firing controlled bursts instead of long sprays, focusing on geometric intercept points rather than tracking, is studied and incorporated into training protocols.
The Diamondbacks waste gunners become known as particularly deadly.
German fighter pilots learn to avoid the right side attack angles when engaging the 99th bomb group.
But Warmer keeps flying.
Mission after mission through the burning summer of 1943, he adds more kills to his tally.
Not seven in a day again, but steady, consistent defensive victories.
By the time his combat tour ends, his total confirmed kills reach nine, making him one of the highest scoring bomber gunners in US Army Air Force’s history.
The distinguished service cross ceremony takes place at Naverin Field in August.
Warmer stands at attention while Colonel Up the Grove pins the medal, second only to the Medal of Honor, on his uniform.
The citation is read aloud.
The assembled men of the 99th Bomb Group cheer.
One week later, Benjamin Warmer receives field promotion to second lieutenant.
The army has a problem.
They can’t promote enlisted men to positions typically reserved for officers, and they desperately need effective aerial gunners in training roles.
The solution is simple.
Make Warmer an officer, then assign him where he’s needed most.
Because of you, a B17 pilot tells him years after the war.
We came home.
You and men like you kept the fighters off us long enough to complete the mission.
You gave us a fighting chance.
The brutal mathematics of aerial combat bear this out.
Analysis after the war shows that tight defensive formations with skilled gunners reduced fighter attack effectiveness by approximately 30%.
Bombers flying in properly maintained formations had a 60% better survival rate than aircraft that became separated from the group.
and gunners who achieved even one or two confirmed kills created a psychological deterrent.
Luftvafa pilots learned to respect the defensive firepower and adjusted tactics accordingly, often breaking off attacks earlier than optimal.
Warmer’s story spreads through the bomber community.
Other gunners ask him for advice.
He tells them the same things.
Stay calm.
Lead your target.
fire in bursts.
Trust your geometry.
Some of them survive their combat tours because of those lessons.
Some of them don’t.
The war is brutally egalitarian in that regard.
Skill improves your odds, but nothing guarantees survival at 20,000 ft with fighters boring in flack bursting around you.
The German perspective adds another dimension to Warmer’s achievement.
Captured Luftwafa pilots from JG53 and JG77.
The fighter units engaged at Gerbini consistently report that American bomber defensive fire was more effective than expected.
One German pilot captured after being shot down later in Sicily states interrogation, “We were told the American bombers were easy targets.
We lost pilots who believed that the gunners are good, better than good.
They’ll kill you if you’re not careful.
The numbers support this assessment.
On July 5th, 1943, the 99th bomb group faced approximately 100 enemy fighters.
The group claimed 38 confirmed fighter kills, a number later revised down to approximately 25 when cross-referenced with German loss records.
Even the conservative figure represents a 25% attrition rate for the attacking force.
The Luftvafa could not sustain losses at that rate.
By November 1943, the 99th Bomb Group transfers to Italy as part of the newly formed 15th Air Force.
They’re based at Tordella on the Foia Plains, a miserable location where crews live in tents, work in mud or dust, depending on the season, and fly missions deeper into German occupied territory than ever before.
The 15th Air Force becomes known as Thunder from the South.
And over the next 18 months, they will drop 300 of the 3,842 tons of bombs on targets in 12 countries.
The 99th flies, 395 combat missions before the war ends.
105 combat sordies in total.
They bomb refineries in Romania, aircraft factories in Austria, railroad yards across occupied Europe.
Every mission carries the same risks as Gerbini.
Some are worse, but the template has been established.
Bomber crews know that exceptional gunnery can mean the difference between survival and death.
They know that men like Benjamin Warmer exist.
Ordinary soldiers who become extraordinary through skill, determination, and cold precision under fire.
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Modern analysis of World War II aerial combat shows that bomber gunners shot down approximately 3,500 German aircraft over the course of the war, far fewer than the inflated contemporary claims, but still a significant number.
These defensive victories didn’t win the war, but they made it possible for bombers to reach their targets and deliver the payloads that destroyed Germany’s war making capacity.
Benjamin Warmer’s seven kills in one mission remain exceptional even in that context.
His achievement stands as testimony to what skilled defenders could accomplish when the odds were stacked against them.
The Luftwafa learned to fear the Diamondbacks and they learned to fear the waste gunner who never seemed to miss.
After the war, Benjamin F.
Warmer III did what most veterans did.
He went home, got a job, and tried to build a normal life.
He seldom spoke about Gerbini.
He didn’t write a memoir.
He didn’t seek publicity.
The Distinguished Service Cross went into a drawer.
The memories went somewhere deeper.
He died of a massive heart attack on December 6th, 1977 at age 56.
His ashes were interred at Belleview Memorial Park Cemetery in Ontario, California.
The funeral was small, no military honors, no crowds, just family and a few old friends who knew what he’d done and understood why he didn’t talk about it.
For decades, his story was nearly forgotten.
While fighter races like Richard Bong and Thomas Maguire became household names, bomber gunners remained anonymous.
The nature of their work, defensive rather than offensive, reactive rather than aggressive, didn’t fit the popular narrative of aerial combat.
They weren’t knights dueling in the sky.
They were working men doing a dangerous job in terrible conditions.
But historians eventually caught up with the truth.
As wartime records were declassified and analyzed, Benjamin Warmer’s achievement at Gerbini emerged as one of the most remarkable individual performances in the entire bomber campaign.
Seven confirmed kills in one mission by one enlisted man standing at an open window with a 50 caliber machine gun.
The lessons he demonstrated remain relevant.
The fundamentals of aerial gunnery, lead calculation, burst control, target geometry are still taught to weapons officers today.
Modern aircraft use radar fire control systems and computer aided targeting, but the underlying mathematics are identical to what Warmer solved in his head at 21,000 ft in July 1943.
The 99th Bomb Group’s legacy lives on as well.
The unit was deactivated after World War II, but their combat record, 395 missions, 1055 sorties, targets struck across 12 countries, established standards that subsequent bomber units studied and emulated.
The 15th Air Force, dismissed as minor leaguers by their counterparts in the Eighth Air Force, destroyed half of all petroleum production in Europe and crippled German transportation networks.
They did it from primitive bases in Italy with less support and fewer resources than units in England.
The moral lesson of Benjamin Warmer’s story isn’t about heroism.
It’s about competence.
He wasn’t brave because he felt no fear.
Every bomber gunner was terrified and any man who says otherwise is lying.
He was effective because he mastered his equipment, understood the geometry of his job, and executed under pressure when execution meant the difference between life and death.
Today, when you hear someone say they don’t make them like that anymore, remember that Benjamin Warmer wasn’t special because of who he was.
He was special because of what he did when it mattered.
He was an FBI bodyguard who became a waste gunner who became an ace who became a second lieutenant who went home and lived quietly until his heart gave out at 56.
He never sought fame.
He just did his job better than almost anyone in history.
On one brutal July morning over Sicily when the sky was full of fighters and the only thing standing between survival and death was one man who refused to miss.
His name was Benjamin F.
Warmer III and you should remember it.
