Customer Reviews

Dead Engine Kids : World War II Diary of John J. Briol, B-17 Ball Turret Gunner, with Comments from Notes of Other Crew Members

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I was the original Copilot on Lauren Spleth's B-17 crew, on which John Briol was the Ball Turret Gunner. We trained as a crew in Florida and Virginia, then joined the Eighth Air Force's 457th Bomb Group, with whom we flew our 35 missions, beginning September 12, 1944. In violation of regulations, John kept a diary, which he brought home sewed in the lining of his Army field jacket. Some years after John's death, his son brought the diary to my attention. After reading it, I concluded it should be published. I added comments of other crew members and my own, and persuaded two ladies, residents of Berlin at the time of our last mission, to write about how it was to be bombed. I combined all these inputs into the diary, served as editor, and self published DEAD ENGINE KIDS in 1993. Our crew name, and the name of the book, came from our crew's record of failed and shot out engines. It took only one mission, our first one, to convert us from young kids to grown men. Even now, when Î open the book and begin to read, it's as if it all happened yesterday, and I'm scared all over again.

This book is right up there with Bert Stiles' excellent book. It is dangerously readable: I bought it for a long trip, but read the first page and couldn't put it down... now I need another book to bring.

Somehow books written after the war get filtered by memory, if only slightly. They seem a bit more glorious than reality. Books written about the air war while it was happening record something that the memoirs don't. This is a down and dirty B-17 book. The crew's accounts and feelings about the air war come through so clearly that it made me wonder why I was reading this book about such a difficult thing to endure.

If you're interested in B-17's, or the air war in general, you need to read this book.

"Dead Engine Kids" is a book written realistically. It reveals what it really was like to fly missions over Germany, and the anxiety and fear that each of the crew members felt. This book records events written down in diary form by the ball turret gunner and other members of the crew, expressing the realities of war. Two German women also wrote to tell their memories of living in Berlin when the Dead Engine Kids bombed it. The book far surpasses other books and movies concerning the air war over Germany. This account captures your attention from the time you begin to read it, and keeps it to the end. Avoiding foul language, the words and style are very good at generating and relating the feelings and emotions of the crew members during and between missions, in this period of their lives.

This book will verify all the terrifying elements of the ball turret. It's impossible to imagine hanging in a sphere underneath the B-17, 5 miles up without a parachute, looking flack in the face and sweating at 40 degrees below zero. It even gets worse in a fighter attack when the gunner is moving up, down and around like a barrel going over Niagra Falls.

Too many war experiences are told long after the fact. Dead Engine Kids is excellent in that it relates the bombing missions on B-17s as they happened. You wonder if they will survive

This mission by mission diary account of a brave B-17 crew is a book that is very hard to put down! Flying higher than Mount Everest while battling with german flak, fighters, and frostbite, this book is proof of our "Greatest Generation" in the grips of war. We shall forever be indebted to the service of these and all other WWII veterans. God bless you all!

I have been researching the brief life of an uncle who as a Ball Turret Gunner on a B-17. I have enjoyed this book because it gives a new perspective on the battles in the skies over Germany. Rather than a long, dull recitation of historical facts and statistics like so many books provide, Briol's diary lets you see what day-to-day life was for a gunner on a B-17 and, especially important to me, what it was like for the ball turret gunner, specifically. Other books focus on missions and planes but this gives you insite into many details that you just don't learn in other books. Your butt and back will ache with Briol's after a day-long mission to the heart of Germany crammed into that little ball. You'll feel the freezing cold he felt even through his electrically heated clothing. And you'll get a sense of the stress that broke the spirit of many men watching nearby planes explode in flight right next to you and wondering if you're next.

This book will inform, entertain and make you ache for the pain that these men suffered for all of us.

If I could recommend only two books to learn what it was like in a B-17, I would recommend "Dead Engine Kids" and "Half A Wing, Three Engines And A Prayer" by Brian O'Neill.

I've just finished reading this book; it was loaned to me by a niece of John Welch (the co-pilot, editor, and publisher of this book).

Great praise to John Welch for recognizing the value of his crew mate's (Briol's) diary when he saw it, and even more praise for his effort to make sure it was published so it could be shared with others.

And also, GREAT PRAISE for John Briol, the diarist, whose writings make up 95%+ of this book.

My iumpression is that John Briol, in large part, wrote this for you -- for US.

John had a sense that something was happening -- aerial war, conditions almost unendurable, terror, fear, courage, caring -- that needed to be captured and shared with someone both to preserve his sanity but also to pass something on to others (to US). He was not at all sure that he would survive but he hoped his diary would and he made arrangements to protect it in case he was killed.

John was obviously a perceptive man with a good facility for expressing himself. He never tried to be "literary" or to pose as an author. He simply -- and quite spontaneously and tellingly -- recorded day after day what it was like to endure combat and the threat of no return, measuring his required time against the required number of combat missions. He brought me really there. (His sentiments may be somewhat similar to those our soldiers in Iraq are feeling in April of '04).

I found his compassion (and those of other crerw members) for the civilian casualites to be somewhat affirming of the human race.

This is an EXCELLENT book. If a movie could capture the essence of this, it would be somewhere between "The Fog of War" and "Saving Private Ryan." It should be made.

Thank you, John Brion -- and John Welch -- for sharing.

Must be a terrific book based on these reviews! However a new price of $383.00? Is it printed in Gold Leaf? Were there only 10 printed? Does any book outside of a rare collector's edition have an intrinsic value of nearly $400? I would love to own this book, but I feel I would always be searching for the value in paying that much when I could be using that money to support the local food bank or other worthy cause.