On the Ground

Black smoke rises from the Liberty Lady, just after the incendiary bomb had been set off by the crew.

Captain Charles W. “Smithy” Smith, with assistance from co-pilot Merle P. Brown, skillfully guided the crippled B-17 for about 2500 feet before it came to rest. The crew members, all ten of them, were stunned but unhurt. It was 4:55 in the afternoon. They had been in the earsplitting bomber for nearly eight hours. Just three hours earlier, they were flying above the heart of Nazi Germany surrounded by flak and hordes of angry Luftwaffe fighters.

Now they were on the ground. It was quiet, still, and they could see that they had landed on a large marshy field. They were unaware of their position and believed that they most likely were in Denmark, a country occupied by Germany. As a standard precaution, Smithy ordered that an incendiary be set off in the radio room. The bombardier, Herman F. Allen, had already thrown the Norden bombsight into the sea.

The ten men left their B-17 Liberty Lady for the last time as a column of black smoke rose from the airplane. They took shelter in a nearby thicket of trees.

The first person to appear at the crash site was a uniformed guard armed with a Mauser rifle with a bayonet attached to the end of it. He hollered out to them in a foreign tongue.

Now the crew was convinced that the soldier walking toward them was a German, and their worst fears were about to come true …