BAILING OUT OF B-17 IN DEATH DIVE OVER WW11 GERMANY

Go back and check on their parachutes. Have them try the escape hatches to see if they can use them to bail out. If they can’t, gather them in the waist, get a hatch open and bail them out. Make sure their hands are on the pull ring. Wait, take Wes. Get him ready to bail. Slap his face or something, tell him what to do.”

   “Can you crash-land it?”

   “Not a chance. I can’t bring the nose up enough.”

   Steve got Wes under the arms and half-carried him across the narrow catwalk above the bomb bay. Luis Alvarez was in the best shape, and he helped Steve get the rest of the crew up and ready to jump. Like the ditch off Corsica, Luis got the starboard aft waist hatch open. Steve thought that if men knew they were going to die they’d want to jump. Some did, some didn’t. They saved Wes for last hoping he’d wake up.

   With three of the men, Steve had to put their hands on the ripcord and bellow over the wind, “Count to seven and pull the fucking cord.” They desperately held on to the sides of the door. Steve put his foot in their backs and pushed them out. They were at 6,000 feet, and the plane was dropping faster. Luis and Steve got Wes Trowbridge on his feet. Steve slapped his face not too hard but firmly. They yelled above the wind.

   “We can’t leave him, Luis. Put his hand on the ripcord, and we drop him out and hope the cold air wakes him. It’s his only chance.”

    “I’m going out with him,” Luis said. “Hold him up straight. I’ll scissor my legs around his, put an arm around his body and hold his pull ring with the other. Once we’re clear I’ll drop him and pull his cord. Then I’ll pull mine.” Luis wrapped himself around Wes like a soft pretzel.

   Steve balanced them: I thought I’d seen guts before, but this.

   “Push us out hard now,” Luis said. And they were gone. Luis held on to Wes. They separated. Wes’s chute opened, and a few seconds later Luis’s chute blossomed.        

   Steve checked the plane one more time and went forward. “Everyone’s out but you and me.”

   “The explosions blew us in a southeasterly direction,” Rick said. “I tried to hold that vector. We’re probably well into Czechoslovakia. Walk east when you land, maybe fewer Germans.”

   “What about you?”  
    “I’ll be right behind you. Now scram, we’re below two-thousand and dropping fast. Roll when you hit. It looks flat down there, just a few trees.”

(This vignette was adapted from WW11 Soldier flier Prisoner Partisan: Missing in Action and Presumed Dead.)  http://amzn.to/19QmSVH