At a.m.
October 14th, 1943, First Lieutenant James Robert Callahan, 24 years old, 11 combat missions completed, sits in the left seat of a B17G flying fortress nicknamed Pennsylvania Steel at 27,800 ft above Schwinfort, Germany.
Outside his cockpit window, 291 American bombers stretch across 40 mi of sky in tight combat box formations.
Below them, the ball bearing factories that produce 60% of Germany’s precision bearings are about to receive 1,400 tons of high explosive ordinance.
Callahan’s hands rest on the control yolk.
His oxygen mask hisses with each breath.
The temperature outside reads -48° F.
through breaks in the cloud cover 5 mi below.
He can see the silver thread of the main river cutting through industrial haze.
This is the second Schwin Fort raid in 3 months.
The first raid lost 60 bombers.
Every man on Pennsylvania Steel knows the statistics.
One in four B17s that enter German airspace over Schwinfort doesn’t come home.
The mission objective is simple and brutal.
destroy Kougal Fiser ball bearing plant number two and the Verinika Kougal Logger Fabrian facility.
These two factories alone supply bearings for every Panzer tank, every Messer Schmidt fighter, every Yuboat diesel engine in Hitler’s war machine.
Without these bearings, the German military grinds to a halt within months.
Callahan’s co-pilot, First Lieutenant Marcus Antonio Deluchcci, 23 years old, calls out the approach timing.
IP in 4 minutes.
Bombardier reports sight on primary target.
Pennsylvania Steel flies in the lead squadron’s second element, tucked into a position called Purple Heart Corner by the crews.
It’s the sweet spot where German fighters concentrate their attacks.
Close enough to the formation leaders to draw fire, exposed enough on the flank to be vulnerable.
The aircraft carries 4,000 lb of incendiary and high explosive bombs in its belly.
Fuel tanks hold two00 gallons of 100 octane aviation gasoline.
The bomb bay doors hang open, waiting.
At a.m., the German flack begins.
Black flowers of 88 mm artillery shells bloom across the formation.
Each explosion erupts with a velocity of 6,200 ft per second, hurling steel fragments the size of dinner plates through the air.
Callahan feels Pennsylvania steel buck and shutter as concussive waves hit the airframe.
A shell detonates 40 ft off the right wing.
Shrapnel punches through the aluminum skin with sounds like ballpeen hammers striking sheet metal.
Flack heavy, Deluchcci reports, his voice steady despite the hammering.
288 guns estimated on the ground.
The bombardier, Second Lieutenant William Francis Hendrickx, 25 years old, lies prone in the nose section with his eye pressed to the Nordon bomb site.
Steady, steady.
Bomb run.
Active.
Don’t deviate.
Callahan holds Pennsylvania steel level despite every instinct, screaming to dive, to climb, to break formation.
Breaking formation means isolation.
Isolation means death.
The statistics prove it.
A lone B17 survives an average of 11 minutes against concentrated fighter attack.
At a.m., Technical Sergeant Raymond Peter Romano, 26 years old, tail gunner, keys his intercom from the rear of the aircraft.
His voice crackles with static and urgency.
Fighters level FW190s, 12 of them coming in line a breast.
The Fucklewolf 190s hit the formation like sledgehammers.
These aren’t the careful probing attacks of earlier raids.
This is Sturm Groupa tactics.
Heavily armored fighters pressing attacks to point blank range, accepting casualties to guarantee kills.
Each FW190 carries four 20mm cannons and two 13mm machine guns.
At convergence range of 200 yd, they unleash a combined weight of fire that can saw a bomber in half.
Callahan watches a B17 called Dixie Demon, three positions ahead, take a fighter attack through the cockpit.
The entire nose section disintegrates in a spray of aluminum and glass.
The bomber rolls inverted and begins the long death spiral toward Earth, trailing debris and human bodies.
Steady, Hrix calls from the nose.
30 seconds to release.
The formation titans bomb bay doors gape open on 291 bombers.
The FW190s wheel and come again, this time in a head-on attack.
The most dangerous geometry for both hunter and prey.
Closure rate 550 mph.
Time in the killing zone 3 seconds.
Pennsylvania Steel’s top turret gunner, Staff Sergeant Donald James Pritchard, 24 years old, opens fire with his twin 50 caliber machine guns.
The weapons hammer out 750 rounds per minute each, filling the aircraft with cordite smoke and the smell of hot metal.
Spent brass cartridges cascade down through the fuselage, bouncing off bulkheads and crew members boots.
At a.m., the bombs release.
Callahan feels Pennsylvania steel leap upward as 4,000 pounds drop free.
Below, Schwinfort begins to die.
The formation banks left, beginning the long turn toward home.
300 m of hostile airspace, every mile contested.
That’s when it happens.
At a.m., an FW190 piloted by Oberloitant Klaus Becker of Jag Gishvader 1 executes a diving attack from high, the blind spot where Pennsylvania Steel’s defensive guns can’t track.
Becker’s fighter carries a pair of 21 cm Worfer Grren rockets under the wings, weapons designed specifically to break up bomber formations by creating air bursts of shrapnel.
He fires both rockets from one 100 yd.
The first rocket misses, detonating 60 ft above Pennsylvania steel in a black cloud of fragmentation.
The second rocket does not miss.
It strikes the horizontal stabilizer at the base of the tail section with the force of 90 lb of high explosive.
The explosion severs the entire tail assembly.
Pennsylvania steel’s tail section containing the tail gunner position, the vertical stabilizer, the horizontal stabilizers, the rudder, and the elevators separates from the aircraft.
It tumbles away through the sky in three major pieces.
Technical Sergeant Raymond Romano dies instantly, his position obliterated by the rocket’s direct impact.
First Lieutenant James Callahan at a.m.
suddenly controls an aircraft that should not be capable of controlled flight.
The control yoke goes neutral in Callahan’s hands.
No resistance, no feedback.
Pennsylvania Steel’s nose drops 15° and the aircraft begins a slow, sickening roll to the right.
What happened? Deluchcci shouts, fighting his own control yoke.
I’ve got nothing.
No elevator authority, no rudder.
Through the cockpit window, Callahan watches the formation sliding away as Pennsylvania steel falls out of position.
Without the tail section, the aircraft has no pitch control and no directional stability.
The control surfaces that allow a pilot to climb, descend, or turn no longer exist.
They’re tumbling through the sky 27,000 ft above Nazi Germany in an aircraft that violates every principle of aerodynamic stability.
The physics are absolute.
A conventional aircraft cannot maintain controlled flight without horizontal and vertical stabilizers.
The tail section provides the counterbalancing force that keeps the nose from pitching down under the weight of the engines.
It provides the weather vein effect that keeps the aircraft pointed in the direction of travel.
Without these surfaces, Pennsylvania steel should enter an unreoverable spin within 30 seconds, but it doesn’t.
The aircraft wallows through the air, noseheavy and yawing 20 degrees right, but it doesn’t spin.
The four right R1820 cyclone engines, each producing 1200 horsepower, continue their steady thunder.
The wings, intact and generating lift, keep Pennsylvania steel airborne despite the massive structural failure.
Staff Sergeant Eugene Lawrence Mitchell, 23 years old, the flight engineer positioned behind the pilots, unbuckles and moves to the cockpit to assess damage.
He looks a through the fuse and sees daylight where the tail should be.
The entire rear section terminates in a jagged wound of torn aluminum, exposed stringers, and severed control cables whipping in the 180 mph slipstream.
Tails gone, Mitchell reports, his voice flat with shock.
Complete separation.
Romano’s position is just gone.
The intercom erupts with voices.
Second Lieutenant William Hrix from the nose.
What’s our status? Are we staying with the formation? Staff Sergeant Donald Pritchard from the top turret.
We’re falling back.
Fighters are circling.
Staff Sergeant Robert Vincent Castellano, 25 years old.
Ball turret gunner, his voice tight with fear from his position in the belly turret.
Get me out of here.
If we bail, I’m trapped.
Technical Sergeant Michael Patrick O’Brien, 24 years old, radio operator.
I’m getting no response from Romano.
Raymond, do you read? Callahan keys the intercom override.
Romano’s gone.
Tail section is gone.
Everyone else check in by position.
The roll call comes.
Hris bombardier nose section here.
Second Lieutenant Thomas Edward Sullivan, 23 years old, navigator here.
Do we have any directional control at all? Pritchard, top turret here.
Castellano, ball turret here.
But I need out of this turret now.
O’Brien, radio operator here.
Mitchell, flight engineer here.
Staff Sergeant Charles Henry Brennan, 26 years old, right waist gunner here.
Staff Sergeant David Paul Rutkowski, 24 years old, left wastegunner here.
Deluchcci here.
Nine men accounted for, one dead.
Pennsylvania Steel carries eight souls through hostile sky in an aircraft missing its entire tail assembly.
The immediate problem crystallizes.
They cannot maintain formation in altitude.
Without elevator control, Callahan cannot arrest the slow descent.
Pennsylvania Steel drops through 27,000 ft, then 26,500, falling at approximately 300 ft per minute.
The formation continues climbing away, pulling toward 28,000 ft for the journey home.
We’re alone, Deluchcci states.
Fighters will be all over us in 2 minutes.
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Back to Callahan.
The engineering problem is unprecedented.
A B17 maintains pitch stability through its horizontal stabilizers.
The winglike surfaces at the tail that counteract the noseheavy tendency caused by the engines mounted forward of the center of gravity.
Without those stabilizers, the aircraft should pitch nose down into an accelerating dive.
But Pennsylvania Steel isn’t diving.
It’s descending in a controlled, if unstable, descent.
Mitchell, the flight engineer, sees it first.
Trim tabs, he says.
The elevator trim tabs were set for level flight, even though the elevators are gone.
The trim tab setting created a slight up elevator moment before separation.
And the center of gravity, we dropped our bomb load.
We’re lighter in the nose than we should be.
Callahan understands immediately.
The bomber’s weight distribution has shifted.
With 4,000 lb of bombs gone from the forward bomb bay and the tail section gone from the rear, Pennsylvania Steel’s center of gravity has moved aft closer to the point where it should be for stable flight without tail surfaces.
It’s not perfect.
It’s not safe, but it’s keeping them in the air.
Can we control it? Deluchcci asks.
Throttles, Callahan says, testing his theory.
He advances the throttles on engines 1 and two, the left wing engines to 2200 RPM while reducing engines three and four to 11,900 RPM.
The differential thrust pulls Pennsylvania Steel’s nose to the left, counteracting the rightward yaw.
The aircraft responds slowly, clumsily, but it responds.
Pitch control through power, Mitchell confirms.
Increase all four throttles together.
The nose comes up.
Reduce power.
Nose drops.
Asymmetric thrust handles yaw.
It’s not flying.
It’s controlled falling with attitude adjustments, but it’s enough to give them a chance.
The temperature outside reads -51° F at their current altitude of 25,800 ft.
Wind speed 85 knots from the northwest.
Every minute, Pennsylvania steel falls another 300 ft and drifts 1.7 mi east.
course.
At this rate, they’ll be at 10,000 ft, where German fighters operate most effectively, in 52 minutes, and they’re over the heart of Germany, 280 mi from friendly territory.
At a.m., the FW190s return.
Three fighters break from their pursuit of the main formation and wheel back toward the crippled bomber.
Oberllo and Klaus Becker leads them, sensing the kill.
A lone B17 damaged and falling behind represents a propaganda victory.
Gun camera footage for the Vulcan Sha news reels.
Another cross painted on a fighter’s fuselage.
Staff Sergeant Charles Brennan in the right waist position spots them first.
Fighters three FW190s high starting their run.
The defensive coordination begins.
Without the tail guns, Pennsylvania Steel has lost 25% of its defensive firepower and its entire rear coverage.
The remaining gunners must compensate.
Pritchard in the top turret swings his guns aft.
Castano finally extracted from the ball turret by Rutowski and now manning the left waist gun tracks the approaching fighters.
Brennan shoulders his 50 caliber and waits for range.
The lead FW190 comes in from level, exactly where the tail guns should interdict.
Becker’s fighter grows larger in the waist gunner’s sights, wing cannons flickering with muzzle flash.
His 20 mm rounds walk across Pennsylvania steel’s right wing, punching through aluminum with thunderclap impacts.
Brennan opens fire at 400 yd.
His tracers arc across the sky, arcing behind the fighter.
He corrects, leading the target, and his next burst stitches across the FW190’s cowling.
Smoke trails from the German fighter engine, but Becker presses his attack to 150 yards before breaking off, his cannon rounds chewing through Pennsylvania steel’s fuselage.
The second fighter attacks from level, the killing position, unopposed.
His rounds hammer into the aircraft’s center section.
The radio equipment explodes in a shower of sparks and vacuum tubes.
A 20 mm shell penetrates the fuselage 3 ft behind O’Brien’s position, blowing a hole the size of a basketball through both sides of the aircraft.
The slipstream screams through the openings, temperature inside the fuselage plummeting.
The third fighter overshoots, his attack angle misjudged.
Pennsylvania steel shutters under the assault, but continues flying.
Hydraulic fluid streams from perforated lines.
The number three engine begins running rough, its RPM fluctuating.
A fire warning light flickers on the instrument panel.
Number four engine.
Engine 4 fire.
Deluchcci calls.
Activating extinguisher.
He pulls the fire suppression tea handle.
CO2 floods the engine in a cell.
The fire warnings.
Light stays illuminated for 7 seconds, then extinguishes, but the engine is finished.
Callahan feathers the propeller, reducing it to flat pitch to minimize drag.
They’re down to three engines.
Pennsylvania Steel descends through 24,000 ft.
At a.m., Callahan establishes the reality for his crew.
We cannot make England.
We probably cannot make Allied lines.
Our options are bail out over Germany and become PSWs or we try for Switzerland.
Sullivan the navigator works his charts despite the aircraft’s yawing instability making drawing straight lines impossible.
Switzerland is 290 mi southeast.
Current heading puts us over Stoutgart in 40 minutes.
If we turn south now, we might make Lake Constance and Swiss airspace before we’re at minimum altitude.
The mathematics are brutal.
Pennsylvania steel descends at 300 ft per minute on three engines.
They’re at 23,400 ft.
Switzerland requires crossing the Alps with peaks reaching 13,000 ft.
They need to maintain at least 15,000 ft to clear the mountains.
That gives them 8,400 ft to work with, 28 minutes before Switzerland becomes impossible.
But turning south means flying deeper into Germany away from the Allied formations and their protective fighter coverage.
It means extended exposure to German interceptors and flack batteries.
How much fuel? Callahan asks.
Mitchell checks the gauges.
1,200 gallons remaining, but we’re burning fuel 30% faster than cruise rate because we’re using throttle for control.
I estimate 90 minutes of flight time.
90 minutes.
Switzerland is 110 minutes away at their current speed and descent rate.
Callahan makes the decision.
We go for Switzerland.
Throttle back to maximum economy cruise.
Mitchell, transfer all fuel to the outboard tanks.
We need the weight distribution for stability.
The aircraft banks into a slow wallowing turn to the south.
Without rudder control, the turn requires careful differential thrust, advancing left engines, retarding right engines, waiting for the nose to swing, then rebalancing power to stop the turn.
The maneuver takes 4 minutes to execute what should take 30 seconds.
At a.m.
they cross the Nekar River at 21,800 ft.
Below Stuttgart’s industrial districts sprawl across the landscape.
Flack batteries open fire, not the heavy 88 mm guns, but the smaller 37 mm automatic cannons designed for lowaltitude defense.
The shells reach up toward Pennsylvania Steel, detonating 1,000 ft below effective range.
The gunners are firing anyway, hoping for a lucky hit.
The crew settles into the strange rhythm of survival.
Hris, no longer needed as bombardier, moves to the navigator position to help Sullivan with course corrections.
Pritchard maintains watch from the top turret, scanning for fighters.
The waste gunners, Castellano, Brennan, and Rutowski, rotate between guns and damage control, using walkound oxygen bottles to move through the fuselage.
O’Brien attempts to restore radio function.
The liaison set is destroyed, but the command radio might be salvageable.
He works with frozen fingers, splicing wires by feel through heavy gloves, knowing that communication with Allied forces could mean the difference between internment in Switzerland and a funeral in Germany.
At a.m., Pennsylvania steel descends through 18500 ft over the Suabianjura Highlands.
The terrain below rises to meet them.
Forested ridges at 3,000 ft elevation, reducing their effective altitude advantage.
Visibility extends to 40 m in the crystal air.
To the south, the Alps are visible as a white wall across the horizon.
The number two engine begins to fail.
Mitchell notices at first a subtle roughness in the RPM, a slight decrease in manifold pressure.
Engine 2 is running lean.
Might be fuel flow issue.
Might be battle damage to the fuel lines.
They cannot afford to lose another engine.
Without number two, they’re down to engines one and three, both on the left wing.
The asymmetric thrust would make controlled flight nearly impossible.
Can you fix it? Callahan asks.
I can try.
Mitchell unbuckles and moves toward the Bomb Bay catwalk, carrying his walkound oxygen bottle.
The temperature in the unpressurized fuselage reads -35° F.
He works without gloves, impossible to manipulate the small fuel system valves with heavy mits, accepting frostbite as the price of survival.
The fuel transfer valve to engine 2 is partially closed, jammed by shrapnel damage.
Mitchell forces it open with pliers, skinning his knuckles against frozen metal.
The engine smooths out, RPM stabilizing.
Mitchell’s hands are white and numb when he returns to his position.
At a.m.
, the FW190s return.
Five fighters this time, fresh from refueling and rearming at Agsburg airfield.
They’ve been vetored to the crippled bomber by ground controllers tracking Pennsylvania Steel’s progress on Freya radar.
The fighters approach from the south, cutting off the escape route to Switzerland.
Staff Sergeant Donald Pritchard in the top turret sees them first.
Fighters dead ahead.
Five FW1 ringes in finger four formation plus one.
The geometry is perfect for the German pilots.
Pennsylvania steel wallows toward them at 165 mph, unable to maneuver effectively, bleeding altitude through 16 down 200 ft.
The fighters split.
Three climbing to attack from above.
Two setting up for a head-on pass.
Hrix positioned in the nose shoulders the single 50 caliber machine gun in the nose socket.
This is the most vulnerable position on a B17.
No armor, no protection, just plexiglass and aluminum between the bombardier and cannon shells traveling 2,800 ft per second.
The two FW190s bore in from level.
Closure rate 510 mph.
Hendrickx opens fire at 800 yd.
His tracers reaching across the sky.
The German pilots don’t flinch.
Their cannons spark at 600 yd.
The universe becomes violence.
20 mm shells rip through Pennsylvania steel’s nose section.
The plexiglass disintegrates.
Instrument panels explode.
A shell passes through the cockpit between Callahan and Deluchcci, missing both pilots by 18 in, and detonates against the armor plate behind the seats.
Shrapnel peppers the cabin.
Hrix fires continuously, the 50 caliber hammering against his shoulder.
One FW90 breaks, left trailing smoke.
A hit possibly fatal.
The second fighter pulls up 50 ft above Pennsylvania Steel’s cockpit, so close Callahan can see the pilot’s face.
Then the fighter is gone, flashing past at 500 mph.
The top element attacks three FW 190s, diving from 2,000 ft above.
Their attacks timed to converge simultaneously on the crippled bomber.
Pritchard engages the lead fighter, his twin 50 calibers, creating a cone of fire.
The waist gunners track their targets, waiting for the precise moment when geometry and ballistics align.
The lead fighter rounds stitch across Pennsylvania Steel’s left wing, severing fuel lines.
Gasoline vapor mists in the slipstream.
One tracer round could ignite the entire wing.
The second fighter targets the cockpit.
His rounds hammer into the instrument panel.
The airspeed indicator explodes.
The altimeter freezes at 15y 100 ft.
Hydraulic pressure drops to zero.
Deluchcci takes shrapnel in his left shoulder.
A fragment the size of a dime punching through his flight suit and embedding in muscle.
The third fighter misjudges his angle and overshoots without firing.
Pennsylvania Steel survives the pass, but the cumulative damage is catastrophic.
Number one engine is losing oil pressure.
Number two engine is running rough again.
The fuel vapor from the severed wing line creates an explosive atmosphere around the left wing.
The cockpit instruments are 60% destroyed.
They’re flying blind, controlling the aircraft by feel and engine sound alone.
At a.m.
at 14th and 200 ft over Ravensburg, the FW190s withdraw.
Not because they’re low on ammunition, they have rounds remaining.
Not because they’re low on fuel, they can pursue for another 20 minutes.
They withdraw because Pennsylvania Steel has crossed an invisible line.
The Swiss border lies 31 miles ahead.
German standing orders prohibit fighter attacks within 50 kilometers of Swiss airspace.
The risk of accidentally violating Swiss neutrality and provoking an international incident outweighs the value of a single bomber kill.
The FW190s bank away to the north, leaving Pennsylvania steel to its fate.
The crew doesn’t celebrate.
They’re too exhausted, too cold, too focused on survival.
Callahan flies the aircraft by instinct now.
The control yoke merely a prop for his hands.
Power settings on three laboring engines determine their altitude, their heading, their speed.
Sullivan plots their position by dead reckoning.
They’ve lost too much altitude for accurate celestial navigation, and the landmarks below don’t match his maps with sufficient precision.
At a.m., they cross into Swiss airspace at 12,800 ft.
Below them, Lake Constance stretches across the border, a blue oval of neutral water between Germany and Switzerland.
Four Swiss Air Force fighters, Americanbuilt P36 Hawks marked with white crosses, rise to intercept, escorting Pennsylvania steel deeper into neutral territory.
The Swiss pilots make no attempt to communicate.
Their orders are clear.
Foreign military aircraft entering Swiss airspace will be forced to land.
Resistance will be met with force.
The Swiss fighters take positions on Pennsylvania Steel’s wings, making the ultimatum clear.
Callahan has no intention of resisting.
His mission now is simple.
Find an airfield and land this wounded bird before altitude runs out or fuel starvation stops the engines.
Sullivan identifies an option.
Dubendorf airfield near Zurich, 47 mi southwest.
The field has a 5,000 ft concrete runway, adequate for a B17 under normal circumstances.
But Pennsylvania steel isn’t normal.
Without tail surfaces, without hydraulics, with three dying engines, a landing attempt might be suicide.
The alternative is ordering his crew to bail out, letting them parachute into Swiss custody while Callahan rides Pennsylvania steel down alone.
He doesn’t consider it seriously.
We’re landing at Dubendorf, Callahan announces on intercom.
Everyone to crash positions.
Bombardier and navigator to the radio room.
Gunners secure equipment and brace.
At a.m., Pennsylvania Steel begins its final approach.
Dubendorf airfield appears below.
At a.m.
, a rectangular expanse of concrete and grass surrounded by Swiss Army positions.
The control tower signals with a green flare.
Permission to land granted.
Swiss emergency crews stand by with foam trucks and ambulances.
Callahan brings Pennsylvania steel around in a wide, gentle descending turn.
The aircraft has no functioning hydraulics, which means no conventional landing gear extension.
Mitchell cranks down the main gear manually using the emergency hand pump.
720 revolutions of the crank handle, his shoulders burning with exhaustion.
The main gear locks down with mechanical certainty.
The nose gear is another problem.
The manual extension system is damaged, jammed by battle damage.
The nose wheel remains retracted.
Nose gear won’t extend, Mitchell reports.
We’re landing on the mains and the nose.
A nose gear uplanding in a normal B17 is manageable, uncomfortable, but survivable in Pennsylvania steel, tailless, and barely controllable.
It could be fatal.
When the nose impacts, the sudden friction could pitch the aircraft forward, driving the propellers into the runway, cartwheeling the bomber across the field.
Deluchcci, his left shoulder stiff with coagulating blood, works the throttles with Callahan.
They’ve developed an unspoken coordination.
over 90 minutes of flying this crippled aircraft.
Each man anticipating the other’s actions, compensating for instability, maintaining the delicate balance of power that keeps them airborne.
Air speed 140, Deluchcci calls, reading the one functioning instrument.
Altitude approximately 800 ft.
Pennsylvania steel descends toward the runway threshold.
The Swiss fighters peel away, giving the bomber clear airspace.
On the ground, emergency crews scramble to positions.
At 500 ft, Callahan reduces power on all three engines, allowing the nose to drop.
The aircraft settles into a steeper descent, the runway rising to meet them.
He can see individual seams in the concrete.
See the white threshold markings, see the faces of Swiss soldiers watching from the field perimeter.
At 200 ft, he makes a critical decision.
He will land long, touching down 150 ft past the threshold.
This gives him maximum runway length for the roll out.
Crucial when brakes are the only way to stop.
and the nose gear will act like a plow when it contacts pavement.
At 100 ft, Pennsylvania steel crosses the runway threshold at 125 mph.
The main landing gear wheels are 8 ft above concrete.
Callahan reduces power further, bleeding off air speed, waiting for the exact moment when lift equals weight.
At a.m., the main wheels contact runway.
The impact is hard but controlled.
The landing gear struts compress, absorb the energy, rebound slightly.
Pennsylvania steel rolls on two wheels.
The tail section that doesn’t exist, creating no downward force on the rear of the aircraft.
The nose section hangs in the air for 3 seconds.
An eternity of uncertainty.
Then physics takes over.
Without tail weight, Pennsylvania Steel’s center of gravity pitches the nose down.
The aircraft rotates forward around the main landing gear axis.
The nose section drops, accelerating toward the runway.
Impact.
The nose hits concrete with a grinding screech of metal.
The plexiglass nose cone shatters completely.
The bombarders’s compartment floor buckles upward.
The forward fuselage crumples inward by 18 in as the structure absorbs catastrophic compression forces.
Hrix and Sullivan, braced in the radio room, are thrown forward against their restraints.
In the cockpit, Callahan and Deluchcci are slammed against their shoulder harnesses as deceleration peaks at 4Gs.
The gunners in the waist section tumble forward into equipment and each other.
Pennsylvania steel grinds down the runway on its main gear and its ruined nose, throwing sparks and aluminum fragments.
The screeching vibration rattles every rivet in the airframe.
Callahan stands on the brake pedals, applying maximum pressure, feeling the wheels lock and skid.
The runway markers blur past 2,000 ft remaining, then 1/500, then 1,00.
At 850 ft from the runway’s end, Pennsylvania steel stops.
The sudden silence is deafening.
The engines tick as they cool.
The wind whistles through a thousand shrapnel holes.
Hydraulic fluid and fuel drip onto concrete, but they’re down.
They’re alive.
They’re in neutral Switzerland.
Callahan sits in the pilot’s seat, hands still on the y control yolk, unable to move, Deluchcci releases his harness with shaking hands.
Behind them, the crew begins to stir.
Groans of pain, gasps of relief, the sounds of men who’ve survived what should have killed them.
Swiss Army personnel surround the aircraft within 90 seconds.
Soldiers with rifles, medics with stretchers, officers in pristine uniforms, staring at the wrecked bomber with expressions of amazement.
They see a B17 without a tail, nose destroyed, wings shredded, engines smoking.
They see nine men climbing out of the wreckage.
The internment process begins immediately.
Under international law, Switzerland must intern all military personnel and equipment from belligerent nations that enter Swiss territory.
Callahan and his crew are no longer combatants.
They’re internees, prisoners of neutral custody.
Swiss medics treat Deluchi’s shoulder wound.
The shrapnel is extracted, the wound cleaned and dressed.
Hrix has two broken ribs from the landing impact.
Sullivan has a concussion.
Castellano has severe frostbite on both hands.
The remaining crew members have minor injuries, cuts, bruises, strained muscles.
They’re transported to Adelboden Internment Camp, a converted hotel in the Bernese Alps, 90 mi south of Dubendorf.
The camp houses 1,73 Allied airmen, Americans, British, Canadians, all shot down over Germany and forced to land in Switzerland.
The conditions are civilized.
Adequate food, heated barracks, medical care, male privileges.
It’s not freedom, but it’s not stallag l either.
The crew of Pennsylvania Steel learns Romano fate from Swiss intelligence officers who examined the wreckage.
The tail gunner died instantly when the rocket struck.
No pain, no awareness, gone before his mind could register the explosion.
His body fell with the tail section, landing in a forest 17 mi southwest of Schwinfort.
German Vermacht units recovered the remains and buried them in the Schweinfort military cemetery.
Weeks pass.
October becomes November becomes December.
Snow blankets the Alps.
The crew settles into internment routine, morning roll call, afternoon recreation, evening lectures from other internees about escape techniques and Allied progress in Italy.
Some internees attempt escape.
Tunneling, forged papers, Swiss civilian cooperation.
Some succeed, most don’t.
Callahan doesn’t attempt to escape.
His shoulder wound, though superficial, damaged nerves that control fine motor function in his left hand.
He can grip, but he cannot feel.
This ends his career as a combat pilot.
He knows it.
Deluchcci knows it.
The crew knows it.
They wait.
On May 8th, 1945, Germany surrenders.
The war in Europe ends.
Adelboden internment camp erupts in celebration.
Men weeping, cheering, singing, getting drunk on Swiss wine purchased from sympathetic guards.
But surrender doesn’t mean release.
Switzerland maintains internment until formal repatriation agreements are signed.
On June 22nd, 1945, 8 months after landing Pennsylvania, Steel Callahan and his crew board a train at Adelboden station, the train travels north through Switzerland to Basil, then into France, then to La Hav on the Channel Coast.
At La Hav, they board a Liberty ship, USS Rockingham Victory, packed with 2,800 American soldiers, airmen, and sailors returning home.
The ship reaches New York Harbor on July 4th, 1945.
Independence Day.
The crew of Pennsylvania Steel stands at the rail, watching the Statue of Liberty emerge from morning haze, watching the Manhattan skyline grow distinct, watching their country welcome them home.
James Callahan returns to Altuna, Pennsylvania to his wife Margaret and his 2-year-old daughter Sarah, whom he hasn’t seen in 18 months.
The Army Air Forces promotes him to captain and awards him the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement, keeping a catastrophically damaged aircraft, flying for 90 minutes and saving eight lives.
He never flies again.
The nerve damage in his left hand disqualifies him from pilot certification.
He takes a position with Pennsylvania Railroad as a logistics coordinator, planning freight routes and managing equipment distribution.
It’s quiet work, ground work, but it suits him.
He’s had enough of altitude.
Marcus Deluchcci returns to Brooklyn, New York, marries his childhood sweetheart, Rosa, and operates his family’s Italian restaurant in Red Hook for 42 years.
He and Callahan exchange letters quarterly for the rest of their lives.
Updates on children, grandchildren, health, memories of Pennsylvania steel.
William Hendris completes medical school at Northwestern University and establishes a family practice in Evston, Illinois.
He treats three generations of patients, never mentioning his two broken ribs or the day he fired a 50 caliber machine gun at fighters traveling 500 mph.
Thomas Sullivan earns a doctorate in mathematics from MIT and teaches calculus at Boston College for 37 years.
His students never learned he navigated a bomber across hostile territory using dead reckoning and a watch.
Eugene Mitchell opens an automotive repair shop in Detroit, Michigan.
He specializes in impossible repairs, engines that won’t start, transmissions everyone else declares finished.
He fixes them all, remembering frozen fuel valves at 18,000 ft.
Donald Pritchard returns to Tulsa, Oklahoma, joins the police department, and serves 31 years, retiring as a detective sergeant.
He never fires his service weapon in the line of duty.
He’s seen enough of what bullets do to metal and flesh.
Robert Castellano operates a fishing charter business in Galveastston, Texas.
He takes tourists after red fish and speckled trout.
His frost bitten hands functional but forever sensitive to cold.
Charles Brennan becomes an iron worker in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, building skyscrapers and bridges.
He works at heights that would terrify most men 600 ft above rivers, walking steel beams 12 in wide.
It doesn’t frighten him.
He’s experienced actual fear.
David Rutkowski earns a degree in engineering from Purdue University and designs manufacturing equipment for General Motors.
His patents improve assembly line efficiency by 23%.
He applies the same problem solving he used at 15,000 ft over Germany.
Assess the situation.
Use what you have.
Make it work.
The crew holds reunions every 5 years.
1950 in Altuna.
1955 in Brooklyn, 1960 in Chicago.
They drink beer, share photographs, remember Romano.
They don’t talk much about the flight itself.
Men who’ve lived through such things rarely do.
But they remain bound by those 90 minutes when survival depended on collective action.
When eight men worked as a single organism to defeat physics and circumstance.
James Callahan dies in 1987 at age 68 of heart failure.
His funeral in Altuna draws seven old men, Deluchcci, Hrix, Sullivan, Mitchell, Pritchard, Castellano, Brennan, Rkowski, who stand in the November reign remembering the day their pilot kept them alive when death was certain.
Marcus Deluchcci dies in 1994 at age 74.
William Hendrickx dies in 1999 at age 81.
The others follow through the early 2000s until only Rkowski remains the last survivor of Pennsylvania Steel’s final flight.
He dies in 2011 at age 90.
The last man who can testify to what happened on October 14th, 1943.
Raymond Romano never came home.
His body rests in Arden’s American Cemetery in Belgium.
Plot D, row 17, grave 23, one of 5,329 American dead, buried there.
He was 26 years old.
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Raymond Peter Romano died instantly when a rocket struck his position at 27,800 ft over Schwinfort.
He was 26 years old.
He never came home.
But the eight men who survived carried his memory forward for 90 minutes over Nazi Germany, for eight months in a Swiss internment camp, and for decades afterward in Altuna, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Tulsa, Galveastston, Pittsburgh, and Indiana.
And now, through this story, his name lives on.
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