The author and his eight crewmembers bailed out of their crippled B-24 on their 24th mission over enemy territory. Shot at and then captured by the Germans, they were taken to a stalag in Nuremberg, and then on a forced march to another in Moosburg. They were strafed by Allied planes, nearly lynched by an angry mob, starved, and shot at again by retreating SS just before their liberation by General Patton. Incredibly, all nine crewmembers survived, and eight of them contributed to this remarkable account that took 20 years to write.
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During World War II ten young volunteers from all over the United States came together to form the "Rosacker" crew in the 93rd Bomb Group of the 8th U.S. Air Force, flying B-24 Liberators based in England. They flew 24 missions together during the closing months of the war.
Their last mission was on January 28, 1945. The target was in Germany's Ruhr Valley, also known as "Flak Alley".
"About halfway through the bomb run, with heavy flak in the area, we lost the #1 engine. After repeated attempts neither Glenn nor Otis could get the propeller into the feathered position, which is required to minimize wind resistance on the airplane. We could not keep up with the formation, so we dropped out of position, still trying to feather the propeller."
Another B-24 next to them was blown up by a direct hit from the anti-aircraft batteries. A second engine quit, and a third was losing power (they only had four engines). The choice was to ditch in the North Sea and die of exposure, or try to make it to an airfield in Antwerp, Belgium, which was occupied by Canadian troops. But the plane was going down fast. At 1,000 feet they bailed out:
"I jumped and counted to ten in about two seconds. I know my 'chute must have come close to catching on a tail fin. Well, the whole rip cord, handle, and cable pulls completely loose from the 'chute pack. I pulled so hard my whole arm flew above my head. I knew the 'chute was broken. I was trying to figure out how to pull the 'chute out of the backpack by hand when all of a sudden it opened, with the 'chute and me in a horizontal position."
But that wasn't all. Remember the airplane, with its dead engines creating drag on one side, causing it to turn?
"I could hear the plane still flying nearby; Joe had put it on autopilot. It sounded as if it was coming back at me."
Then they heard the bullets. Below them was a German army camp in occupied Holland. The enemy bullets and their own plane somehow missed them, but the men were captured, and the narrow escapes continued, one after another. Their captors took them "out back," where the Americans thought they would be shot, but were not; the German civilians wanted to lynch the airmen as they were led on a forced march through Bavaria from one POW camp to another. The prisoners were shot at by their guards, and again by the SS on liberation day.
Miraculously, all ten fliers survived the war. Fifty years later nine of the ten airmen finished this book, working together to refresh and correct each other's memories.
"This is not the usual hard-core war story. We have included family ties, the crew's training and formation, our experiences and feelings, going through severe hardships, the humor that was still there, and the getting on with our lives."
A lot of this seems pretty "hard-core" to us, but also often very funny, deeply intelligent, and extraordinarily human. These men were heroes. Thank you all, gentlemen, for your flying, and for getting your story down on paper.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A real page-turner,
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This review is from: Against All Odds: Shot Down over Occupied Territory in WWII (Paperback)
I've read a lot of books of various periods in history - they all, of course, tell about events and their causes. But very, very few of them succeed in rendering their subject matter as a "felt experience". This book accomplishes that. While reading it, I had the feeling that I knew what it felt like to have been with these guys in their training and on their missions, even though I had not even been born yet when these events occurred.
History does not exist as an abstraction; it exists as a personal perspective, as actual people lived and experienced it. This book draws you into those events and times in such a way that make the intervening 60 years seem but a moment.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unique in that Officers and EM were kept together.,
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This review is from: Against All Odds: Shot Down over Occupied Territory in WWII (Paperback)
Shot down late in the war, January 28th,1945, when most Stalags were , or had been , put on the road in Germany's worst winter in 50 years, this crew was unique in that they were kept together, as they made their way to Moosburg Stalag 7A. The book has good maps of their routes. Their individual stories are very powerful in the "warts and all" way they are presented without any defensiveness. When Worthen made Bombardier, instead of Pilot, he was devastated, but wrote it may have saved the lives of a crew later. One crewman wrote of his emotional problems openly, which I appreciated having been raised by a former POW who had walked out of Germany thru Stalag Luft 3, 13D and 7A, it was refreshing.
There could be more pictures. The thought that 78000 US POWs were left behind with the Russians is a stretch, and disproved in the recent,"The Last Escape" by John Nichol, where it is shown that US Pows were returned in exchange for giving Stalin a free hand in Poland, and for handing over the Russian POWs, many who had fought for the Germans, to Stalin, who then had them murdered. The suggestion that their engine feathering problems, causing their crash, were due to mechanic sabotage back at the 93rd BG, Hardwick, was kind of a shock. The idea comes from the Co-Pilot who disliked B-24s and being a Co-pilot. This was the first time I had seen this sabotage idea inside the BG in 40 books on this subject. In spite of some of my concerns this is a fine book/diary about a "good group of people" who more than met the test they were given.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delivered Far More Then I Expected,
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This review is from: Against All Odds: Shot Down over Occupied Territory in WWII (Paperback)
I really enjoyed the style in which this book was written.
Fifty years after these events took place; nine of the original ten crewmembers of this doomed B-24 were assembled again for this writing. Each one was able to share a snapshot glimpse of what they experienced in their own words and thoughts as the story progresses. Very interesting, it really gives the reader a front row seat to what these brave men lived and survived.
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