B-17 Nav Logbook from WWII

[M2]

Thought some of you fellow history buffs might enjoy reading this...

This logbook records the daily activity of a B-17 navigator with the 385th Bomb Wing out of Great Ashfield, England and his 24 missions from Sept 43 through Feb 44

Cheers! M2

B17-Logbook.pdf

[Vice]

"Went to dance last night. Four girls to every soldier."

If only I could have lived back then...

[Guest Okawner]

Awesome read - puts things in perspective. Really eye-opening how much training was accomplished when not flying missions. Great entry about the botched bail out attempt.

[afnav]

Brilliant! Thanks, M2!

[Steve Davies]

Brilliant! Thanks, M2!

A wonderful piece of history. Thanks, M2.

[HiFlyer]

I saw this a few months ago and found it interesting as much from the off-duty and training stuff as the duty stuff. It was also interesting to me personally because my uncle was a bombardier with the 100th Bomb Group at almost the exact same time. He was shot down over Belgium on the way home from one of the "ball-bearing raids" (Regensburg, in his case), was recovered by the Belgian underground, and spent almost six months getting out thru France and Spain. His story was facinating, but hard to get out of him for years because of the horrors he went through in the process. He was one of the first to get back via that route, and was virtually imprisoned by the Army upon his return to the UK because of the intel he collected on V-1 sites while waiting to leave Belgium. They didn't want the word to get back to the Germans that we were collection info that way. His family was informed that he was MIA when he went down, but were not told of his return for over a year while he (and others) sat under guard in a high security facility in the UK debriefing and being hidden from the rest of the military. He was not allowed to notify the family and return to the US until very late 1944. His story matches this guy's story almost exactly!

By the way, according to the story he finally told his son, his group of several guys was among the first to get back via this "underground railway" which was why the allies were so protective of the information. One of the great tragedies of the trip was that he made it with one of his other crewmembers who made it all the way to the Spanish border, then slipped on a rock crossing a stream to freedom, hit his head, and was killed.

Edited March 11, 2010 by HiFlyer

[sky_king]

Wow...

9-19-43 Fireman killed in explosion

9-20-43 B-17 Crash, no survivors

9-23-43 Mechanic accidentally killed

9-24-43 "Short Sterling" crash

9-26-43 2 B-17s shot down on training mission

9-28-43 Mid-air between two B-17s, both crash

10-4-43 Mission with 2 B-17s shot down

Interesting first two weeks!

[nunya]

The contrast in the way they fought war then and the way we do now has always amazed me. Bomb Germany or Paris and lose crews/aircraft by day, go to a movie or club in downtown London at night. In some ways his entries sound similar to how mine would sound if I kept a journal (brief, fly, land, sleep, do it again). But then he writes about how the Germans jammed their navaids to lure them into fighter traps and the similarities quickly vanish.

[Wolf424]

Wow, well worth the time it took to read completely! Things get put into perspective when you read things like that.

[M2]

It's been pointed out to me that this WWII B-17 log book was already posted by BigFreddie in the History Fridays thread back on 13 September 2009 - 06:05 AM. Thanks to the individual who spared me the embarrassment by notifying me via a PM instead of posting; but I have to own up to my mistake.

I am going to leave this thread open as it may allow more people to see this very interesting piece of history, but I will increase my warning level for failing to abide by the ROE.

Cheers! M2

[Guest CombatDescent]

Thanks M2 for the thread, it was very interesting. I think this deserves its own thread.

Edited April 10, 2010 by CombatDescent

[BQZip01]

Good read

[sigmanugary]

We have this currently floating around our flight at work...I've skimmed through it but I need to read it.