With his pilot wounded and the cockpit in flames, Colonel William B. David,
31, of Calhoun, Georgia, nursed his Flying Fortress out of an 11,000-foot
dive to fly it 500 miles to a safe landing in England. Nine of the crew,
including the Colonel, were treated for injuries. The enemy is missing four
fighter planes.

Colonel David, Commander of an Eighth AAF Heavy Bombardment
Group, was in the co-pilot's place as Command Pilot of the formation.
The bombers had finished blasting a German airfield near Bordeaux,
France and were headed home over the Bay of Biscay.

The Colonel's ship, the Fortress Big Red, which had started out as
Group Leader, was now in Tail-End-Charlie position – last plane
in the last squadron. Enemy fighters made a furious attack. Colonel
David remembers seeing a German fighter peel off to the right, and
he saw gasoline pouring from a right wing tank; the Fortress had been hit
by 20mm cannon shells. At almost the same instant bullets slashed into the cockpit from
a head-on-attack, one of them wounding the pilot in the leg, others drilling the hydraulic system and an oxygen tank.

Colonel David found himself in a sea of flames that burned his hair, his face and hands, and shriveled his flying jacket.

For some seconds the ship flew wild. Then the Colonel put the plane in a dive. “My first thought was to get down
close to the water so we could ditch the aircraft; we were too far off shore to have any chance if we bailed out
at altitude” he recalled.

While the ship plunged from 21,000 down to 10,000 feet, the fire burned itself out. His eyes peeled for enemy
fighters, carefully Colonel David pulled the big bomber out of its dive. The wings stayed on, the ship flew
level and the leaking gasoline tank did not explode.

“My plan was to head straight out to sea and make a run for it,” the Colonel explained. Enemy fighters returned to
the attack, aiming their tracers at the flood of gasoline streaming from the bomber’s wing. Colonel David, alone
in the cockpit, flew evasive action. In a 20-minute battle, his gunners knocked down four of the German planes
and drove off the rest.

The Fortress’s wounded engineer, T/Sgt. John J. Thomas, 29, of Gloversville, New York, succeeded in transferring
gasoline out of the damaged tank and the torrent of escaping fuel stopped. Big Red headed home.

In the end, it was Colonel David in the pilot’s seat and the bombardier, Captain George Bartuska, 23, of 1212 E.
Donald Street, South Bend, Indiana, in the co-pilot’s place, who brought the ship to a safe landing at the home field.
They had flown far out to sea to avoid the Brest Peninsula.

This was the 16th time that Colonel David has led his Group in attacks on German factories and installations.

RETURN TO STORIES                                                     This story and dozens of others can be found in
                                                                                                            The 388th Anthology, Vols. I and II