Author: Karl Smallwood / Source: Today I Found Out
The pilot community, on the whole, is surprisingly close-knit, with fellow pilots seemingly always willing to extend a helping hand to their winged brethren. This is seemingly the case even during war amongst pilots otherwise trying to kill one another, as illustrated previously in our article on the real Red Baron and in the subject of today’s article- that time a German Luftwaffe pilot risked his own life to save the crew of an American B-17 bomber.
This particular tale occurred on December 20, 1943 during a bombing raid by the 379th Bombardment Group who were tasked with destroying an aircraft factory producing fighter craft in the German city of Breman.
The factory was almost comically well-guarded with many dozens of fighter pilots on standby and around 250 flak guns on the ground manned by some of the most elite gunners in the German military.
This brings us to a certain B-17 bomber known affectionately by its newly minted crew, led by Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown, as “Ye Olde Pub”. Initially, Ye Olde Pub was due to fly on the very edge of the bombing formation, dubbed the “Coffin Corner”, but was told to fly at the apex of the formation at the last moment to replace another bomber that had suffered a malfunction.
During the raid, which resulted in the near total destruction of the factory, Ye Olde Pub managed to drop its exploding payload, but the front of the bomber was almost sheared clean off by a shot from a flak gun. During the firefight they also sustained heavy damage to their number 2 and 4 engines.
As Brown struggled to regain control of the severely damaged craft, they were hit again and a piece of shrapnel pierced his shoulder.
While he succeeded in keeping the plane in the air, the damage to the plane’s engines prevented it from remaining with the rest of the bombing party, making it a prime and irresistible target for the dozens of enemy fighters currently buzzing around the now destroyed factory looking for revenge.
Naturally, these fighters endless strafed the plane, shredding its bodywork and almost completely destroying its electrical and hydraulic systems, as well as knocking out the radio, so they couldn’t call for help.
During the frantic melee, one of the bomber’s crew members, Sgt Alex Yelesanko, had his leg almost completely blown off, with the remnants of his lower leg tenuously held on by some tendon. Most every other member of the crew also sustained an injury of some kind and the rear gunner was killed.
To make matters worse, the bomber’s ability to fight back was almost completely neutered when all but three of the plane’s eleven anti-aircraft guns were rendered inoperable.
On top of all this, because the internal compartment of a B-17 isn’t pressurized, the temperature inside the now exceptionally holey plane plummeted well into the deep minuses, freezing some of the medical supplies, including the morphine the crew were trying to inject into Yelesanko.
Things got even worse when the crew’s oxygen system was damaged, resulting in the sorry group all passing out.
In retrospect, however, this actually probably saved their lives.
As a result of the severe damage and no one flying the plane, the bomber went into a spiraling dive and the enemy fighters abandoned it to pursue other targets.
Thankfully for the crew, with a richer oxygen environment at lower altitudes, the injured Brown regained consciousness, later noting, “I… came out of the spin just above the ground. My only conscience memory was of dodging trees but I had nightmares for years and years about dodging buildings and then trees. I think the Germans thought that we had spun in and crashed.”
After regaining control of the bomber, Brown steered it towards Britain, as the least injured crew members tended to the other wounded.
As the plane limped through the air, a German pilot named Franz…
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