When Germans Cut His B‑17 in Half at 24,000 Feet – He Kept Firing Until Impact скачать в хорошем качестве

When Germans Cut His B‑17 in Half at 24,000 Feet – He Kept Firing Until Impact

At 24,000 feet over Germany, Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran realized his airplane no longer existed. The engines’ steady thunder vanished. The vibrations changed. The world inside his tiny tail compartment went from “shaking but familiar” to “falling apart.” He twisted in his seat and saw sky where the rest of the B‑17 should have been. The wings, the nose, the bomb bay, the cockpit, the other nine men of the crew – gone. A 20mm burst had snapped “Rikki‑Tikki‑Tavi” in half. The front of the bomber tumbled away toward the German countryside. Moran was trapped in the severed tail, 24,000 feet up, both arms bleeding, his parachute shredded and useless. Below, German fighters were still circling. Most men would have frozen. Moran got back on the guns. He pressed his shoulders into the armor plate, wrapped his numb fingers around the twin .50‑cal triggers, and kept firing at the attacking fighters while the tail section of his B‑17 fell out of the sky. This is the true story behind the headline: “When Germans Cut His B‑17 in Half at 24,000 Feet — He Kept Shooting All the Way Down.” We go back to the start: 19‑year‑old farm boy from Wisconsin, good with a rifle, dreaming of flying Tail gunner training: silhouette ID, leading German Bf 109s and Fw 190s, controlling fire in a freezing, cramped position The Eighth Air Force in late 1943: Bremen, Schweinfurt, and catastrophic loss rates, with crews expected to fly 25 missions when the average survival was closer to 15 Then we ride with Rikki‑Tikki‑Tavi: Takeoff from Snetterton Heath with the 96th Bomb Group, headed for Bremen’s factories and U‑boat pens Crossing the North Sea in tight combat boxes, bomb bay doors opening over a city ringed with flak Watching another Fortress ahead take a direct hit and fold in half – no parachutes, just wreckage falling On the way home: Number two engine takes a flak hit, Rikki‑Tikki‑Tavi slows, and the formation pulls ahead Moran watches his ship become a straggler – alone and exposed, exactly what German fighter pilots look for Bf 109s and Fw 190s attack from all angles, trying to rip the Fort apart: Engines first Gunners next Then the fuselage We sit in the tail with Moran as: The waist guns and top turret fall silent, one by one Cannon shells tear through the tail, shredding cables and smashing his arms He looks down and sees his parachute pack riddled with holes – even if he bails out, it won’t save him He keeps firing anyway, shooting down at least one Fw 190 even as the tail vibrates itself to pieces Finally: A critical hit snaps the fuselage in front of him The front half of the B‑17 – wings, nose, cockpit, and most of the crew – falls away Moran rides the falling tail alone, guns still barking at German fighters as gravity does its work The tail clips trees and slams into German soil – hard enough to twist metal into new shapes, but at just the right angle to leave one broken American alive inside We close with: His capture and survival as a POW instead of a name on a stone What this one mission says about tail gunners, Eighth Air Force loss rates, and what “doing your job” meant in a B‑17 Why the image of a kid still fighting from a falling tail is one of the most brutal, honest symbols of the air war over Europe 🔔 Subscribe for more long‑form, cinematic WWII micro‑histories – pilots, gunners, infantrymen, and the “no way” decisions they had to make. 👍 Like the video if you want YouTube to push real, documented stories instead of generic compilations. 💬 If someone in your family flew in the Eighth Air Force, as a gunner or pilot, tell us in the comments – your stories shape what we cover next. He was supposed to last 25 missions. On his first heavy run over Germany, they cut the airplane out from in front of him. He kept firing all the way down. Chapters: 0:00 – The Tail Falls Alone at 24,000 Feet 1:30 – Wisconsin Farm Kid to B‑17 Tail Gunner 3:00 – Bremen: 300 Fortresses into the Flak 5:00 – Rikki‑Tikki‑Tavi on the Bomb Run 6:30 – Flak, Broken Fortresses, and the Way Home 8:00 – Number Two Engine Hit: Becoming a Straggler 9:30 – Swarmed by 109s and 190s 11:00 – Arms Hit, Parachute Shredded, Guns Still Firing 12:30 – The B‑17 Breaks in Half 14:00 – Riding the Tail Down and Surviving the Crash 15:30 – POW, Aftermath, and What His Story Really Means #WorldWar2 #WWII #B17 #FlyingFortress #TailGunner #EighthAirForce #AviationHistory #MilitaryHistory #WarStories