B17 ACCIDENTS FROM ABOVE

[Gil Boyd]

A photo, that if you look closely enough you can see the terror unfold, caused by overfly on too fast or too slow..............then BOMB DOORS OPEN, BOMBS GONE!!
Would love to know if the crew made it home OK.

Information

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[browningautorifle]

From what I can understand, it happened often enough. I knew a man that flew Lancasters, told me about one losing power and landing on top of another on takeoff. They were both fully loaded and both detonated.

[Bob Womack]

That photo is part of a famous sequence.



The plane in that pic immediately went into a dive and crash with a loss of all crew. Apparently the strike caused major damage to the control cables.

Bob

[Gil Boyd]

Bob,
Thanks for that. Always wondered where I had acquired it from. I was the village copper at Molesworth in the UK a big B17 base during WW2 now a U.S.Intelligence Centre. I remember being shown many sites around Molesworth, Chelveston, and Glatton on my beat, of the other U.S B17 bases where they met as they circled to go off to Germany, and crashed together and made enormous craters in farm land that even today they are so evident. Around all three stations.
What a tragic loss of young life over here, without firing a shot.

Just up the road as well, near the old RAF Brampton even today two buildings still remain which were SPLASHER beacon transmitters so that aircraft could form up without colliding.
Brampton Grange | American Air Museum in Britain

They were manned by 8th Air Force guys, and not many enthusiasts know what I am talking about when I say SPLASHERS and BUNCHERS.............very interesting use of beacons to stop these types of accidents on take off from so many close Bomber stations.
And that was just the U.S as the whole area around where I live was RAF Bomber and PATHFINDER airfields, and of course U.S.AF Alconbury where up until 1999 the TR2 was based...............a real recipe for disaster during WW2 being so close together like that, but it is the flattest land in the UK, and the reason why airfields were amassed here
LEST WE FORGET.

[Bob Womack]

Hey, Gil!


I've been interested in the B-17 and her crews since I was a teen. Way back then I bought a great book, Flying Fortress, by Edwin Jablonski. It is a history of the bird and her crews that features a bunch of photographs, including that sequence. That book led me to A Wing and a Prayer, by Harry Crosby. That book was a monograph from the lead bombardier of the 100th Bomb Group that flew out of Thorpe Abbotts (East of Alconbury) and formed over the Splasher 6 beacon. Both those books are fantastic if you want background.


Bob

[Flying10uk]

The way that I understand it is that it was common practice for, certainly British bombers, to commence their bombing runs together, stacked at varying heights, and bomb together once over target. The theory being that the bombs released from the aircraft above would most likely miss the aircraft below because it is a very big sky. Sadly the bombs didn't always miss the bomber flying below. One has to understand that there may be a thousand aircraft to get over the target, on a large raid, and one could very easily end up with total chaos with that many aircraft airborne at the same time.

[Gil Boyd]

Bob,
Yes Thorpe Abbotts was near Diss in Norfolk some 45 miles from Alconbury, again on Fen flat land of East Anglia, basically the big bulge on the UK map.
Accidents appear to have occurred more frequently on large bomber formation attacks. This also happened in UK Squadrons as well.

In terms of bombs being dropped on friendly aircraft below, imagine the scene, you are over your target, everybody is concentrating on "seeing" the target in all types of cloud cover,weathers and of course night time. Hoping that in the latter that the target had been illuminated by the Pathfinders dropping their flares.

The very last thing you would be worried about, would be another friendly aircraft above with its throttle slightly advanced dropping its load on top of you. Interesting when you consider how many people, other than the bomb aimer who takes control at the last minute, didn't see the disaster unfold as planes accelerated above!!

[Bob Womack]

By the way, my family is from East Anglia, many centuries ago.

Bob

[Gil Boyd]

From good stock then Bob, either Templar or Viking

[Bob Womack]

From good stock then Bob, either Templar or Viking

Two brothers came back to East Anglia from the Crusades and were appointed to be sheriffs. Between that and an ancestor being hoodwinked into signing into the Doomsday Book, those are the first mentions we can find.

Bob