At 11:32 on the morning of November 29th, 1943, Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran knelt in the tail section of a B7 flying fortress named Ricky Tickabi, watching German fighters swarm toward his bomber like angry hornets.

19 years old, a farm boy from Wisconsin, his first combat mission over a heavily defended target.

The Eighth Air Force had sent over 300 bombers to destroy Bremen’s factories that morning.

German defenders had already shot down six flying fortresses in the first hour.

Moran’s position was the lonliest on the aircraft.

The tail gunner sat on a bicycle style seat at the very back of the bomber, separated from the rest of the crew by 40 ft of fuselage.

His only company was a pair of 50 caliber machine guns and the German fighters trying to kill him.

The B7 carried 10 men.

Pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit, navigator and bombardier in the nose, flight engineer in the top turret, radio operator behind the bomb bay, two waste gunners standing at open windows, ball turret gunner hanging beneath the aircraft in a glass sphere, and Moran alone in the tail.

The tail gunner’s job was simple.

Protect the bomber’s most vulnerable angle.

German pilots had learned early in the war that attacking from directly behind a B17 put them in the firing arc of only one man, the tail gunner.

By November 1943, the eighth air force was losing bombers at a catastrophic rate.

The mission to Schweinffort 2 months earlier had cost 60 flying fortresses in a single day.

600 men killed or captured in one afternoon.

Bomber crews called deep missions into Germany milk runs to hell.

The mathematics of survival were brutal.

A bomber crew had to complete 25 missions to go home.

Statistical analysis showed the average crew lasted 15 missions.

Some groups were losing half their aircraft every month.

Moran had enlisted the day he turned 18.

Growing up on a dairy farm near Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, he had watched aircraft pass overhead and dreamed of flying.

The Army Air Forces needed gunners, young men with quick reflexes and steady nerves.

farm boys who knew how to shoot.

Gunnery training taught him to track fastmoving targets while compensating for wind, altitude, and the speed of his own aircraft.

He learned to fire in short bursts to prevent his barrels from overheating.

He memorized the silhouettes of German fighters.

Messersmidt BF 109, Faulkwolf 190.

He could identify them at 2,000 yards.

But training could not prepare anyone for the reality of combat over Germany.

The cold at 24,000 ft dropped to 40° below zero.

Frostbite claimed fingers and toes.

The thin air made every movement exhausting, and the German fighters came in waves, firing 20mm cannons that could tear through aluminum like paper.

Ricky Tickavi had taken off from Snetton Heath in England that morning as part of the 96 bomb group.

The target was Bremen, an industrial city on the Wor River.

shipyards, aircraft factories, submarine pins, one of the most heavily defended cities in Germany.

The bomber formations had crossed the North Sea in tight defensive boxes, each B7 positioned to provide overlapping fields of fire.

The theory was simple.

Pack the bombers close together so their combined firepower could drive off enemy fighters.

The reality was that a direct hit on one aircraft often damaged those flying beside it.

Breman’s anti-aircraft defenses opened fire as the formations approached.

Black bursts of flack filled the sky.

The bombers could not maneuver.

They had to fly straight and level for the bomb run.

Shrapnel tore through wings and fuselages.

Moran watched a B7 in the formation ahead take a direct hit.

It folded in half and dropped from the sky.

Ricky Tikitavi released its bombs over the target.

4,000 lb of high explosives tumbling toward the factories below.

Mission accomplished.

Now they just had to survive the flight home.

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Back to Moran.

The bomber formation began its turn toward England.

200 m of hostile airspace between them and safety.

That was when Ricky Tick Taviy’s number two engine took a direct hit from flack.

The propeller windmilled uselessly.

The aircraft began losing speed.

A damaged bomber falling behind the formation was a death sentence.

German fighter pilots watched for stragglers.

A lone B7 without the protection of mass defensive fire was easy prey.

Moran saw them coming.

A dozen Messers climbing from below.

Another group of fuckwolves diving from above.

Ricky Tickavi was about to fight alone against overwhelming odds.

And in the tail gunner’s position, Eugene Moran would be their first target.

The first Meshmmit came in from the 6:00 low position directly behind and beneath the bomber.

Moran pressed his shoulders against the steel chest plate behind him and squeezed the triggers.

His twin 50 calibers roared to life.

Tracer rounds stre toward the diving fighter.

The German pilot broke off his attack and rolled away.

But there were more, many more.

The [ __ ] wolves attacked in pairs.

One would draw the gunner’s attention while the other lined up a killing shot.

Moran swung his guns from target to target.

Spent brass casings piled up around his knees.

The smell of cordite filled the cramped compartment.

At 24,000 ft, the temperature inside Ricky Ticky Tavy was 43° below zero.

Moran wore an electrically heated flight suit, but the cold still seeped through.

His breath formed ice crystals on his oxygen mask.

The machine guns grew hot from continuous firing, while his fingers went numb inside his gloves.

The German pilots were professionals.

Luftvafa veterans who had been fighting since 1939.

They knew exactly how to kill a B7.

Target the engines first.

A bomber with damaged engines could not keep up with its formation.

Then work on the gunners.

Eliminate the defensive fire.

Finally, pour cannon rounds into the fuselage until something vital broke.

Moran heard the impacts before he felt them.

20 mm cannon shells punching through aluminum, the sound of tearing metal.

Somewhere forward, one of the waste gunners stopped firing, then the other.

The intercom filled with static and fragments of voices.

Moran could not tell who was speaking or what they were saying.

The bomber shuddered as more rounds struck home.

He kept firing.

There was nothing else he could do.

A fuckwolf came in from the 4:00 position.

Moran swung his guns and pressed the triggers.

The fighter’s wing disintegrated.

It spiraled downward, trailing black smoke.

His first confirmed kill.

He did not 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.

Something was very wrong with the aircraft.

Moran glanced down at his parachute.

Every airman wore one.

The silk canopy packed into a canvas container strapped to his chest.

If the bomber went down, the parachute was his only chance of survival.

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 of them circling the crippled bomber.

Ricky Tickavi was bleeding altitude and speed.

The remaining engines strained to keep the aircraft airborne.

Forward in the nose section, navigator Jesse Orerson was still alive.

He had been wounded but remained conscious.

The pilot and co-pilot were both dead at the controls.

The flight engineer was dead in his turret.

The radio operator was dead.

The ball turret gunner was dead.

The waste gunners were dead.

Of the 10 men who had 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 Tickavi 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 of it 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.

The laws of physics offered no mercy.

Terminal velocity for a human body is approximately 120 mph.

The tail section of a B7 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 of his compartment.

His wounded arm screamed with pain.

Blood sprayed across the interior.

The wind howled through the torn fuselage where the rest of the aircraft had been.

Moran should have been paralyzed with fear.

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 in for a closer look.

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.

The G-forces 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 at them with everything he had.

One meers took hits across its fuselage.

The pilot broke off and dove toward the ground, trailing smoke.

The altimeter in the tail section was shattered, but Moran could see the ground growing larger through the gaps in the torn metal.

Fields, forests, roads, a patchwork of German farmland rushing up to meet him.

The tail sections aerodynamics saved his life.

The vertical stabilizer and horizontal stabilizers acted like crude wings.

They caught the 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.

Seconds, perhaps a minute.

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.

Moran braced himself against the steel chest 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 mph.

The impact snapped branches as thick as a man’s arm.

The vertical stabilizer caught on a trunk and tore away.

The wreckage cartwheelled 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, 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 Psych, 15 mi south of Bremen, enemy territory.

Moran was surrounded by people who had just watched American bombs destroy their factories and kill their neighbors.

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 did not kill him first.

Moran crawled toward the opening where the tail section had separated from the aircraft.

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 three 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 site.

They would find an American airman with catastrophic injuries, an enemy combatant, a terrorist who had just bombed their city.

What they would do with him was entirely uncertain.

The German soldiers emerged from the trees with rifles raised.

They surrounded the wreckage and stared at the American lying in the snow.

One of them shouted orders.

Another ran back toward the road, presumably to summon an officer.

Moran could not resist.

He could not fight.

He could barely breathe.

The soldiers searched him roughly, ignoring his screams of pain 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 anywhere seemed pointless, but orders were orders.

Downed airmen were to be captured and interrogated if possible.

Dead airmen provided no intelligence.

They loaded Moran onto a wooden cart.

No stretcher, no blankets, no medical attention.

The cart bounced along frozen roads for what felt like 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.

Moran could not identify what kind.

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 they were not about to waste them on an enemy airman who would probably die anyway.

Moran lay on that concrete floor for 2 days.

His wounds became infected.

The exposed brain tissue began to swell.

His broken arms turned purple and black.

Gang green was setting in.

Without surgery, he would lose both limbs.

Without antibiotics, the infection would spread to his blood.

Without intervention, he had perhaps 48 hours to live.

The German guards watched him deteriorate.

Some seemed indifferent.

Others appeared almost sympathetic.

But none of them had the authority or the resources to save him.

American bombers had been destroying German cities for months.

Medical supplies were scarce.

Doctors were overwhelmed with German casualties.

And enemy airmen ranked far below German soldiers and civilians on the priority list.

On the third day, Moran was transported again, another cart, another agonizing journey over frozen roads.

This time, his destination was a prisoner of war hospital, a converted building somewhere in occupied territory 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 on incoming prisoners.

Those with survivable wounds received treatment.

Those deemed beyond saving were left to die.

Moran’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 had been pressed into service treating wounded PS, performing surgeries with inadequate equipment, and almost no anesthesia.

The Germans allowed this because it freed their own doctors for more important patients.

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 or medications, 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 the infected tissue from his wounds.

They removed bone fragments from his skull and covered the exposed brain with what tissue they could salvage.

The Serbian doctors attached a metal plate to Moran’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 remaining 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 on 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.

Infection was the great killer in military hospitals.

Antibiotics existed, but were almost impossible to obtain in a German P facility.

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.

Moran slipped into delirium.

He called out for his mother.

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