George Emerson got to inspect the plane he almost died in 69 years ago.
Wednesday he had the chance to examine a B-17 Flying Fortress, a strategic bomber he flew in during World War II, that will be at Lyon Air Museum through Monday as a part of the Wings of Freedom Tour.
For Emerson, of Huntington Beach, the aircraft’s arrival was a chance to retell the details of the flight that turned him into a prisoner of war in Germany after nearly killing him.
The Flying Fortress was a workhorse of the war in Europe and had a reputation of taking solid hits, losing parts of its tail, or use of one or more of its four engines. But it still managed to hobble home to fly again.
But there was one job – tail gunner – that was particularly dangerous, and one that most guys tried to avoid. Emerson, now 88 and in a motorized wheelchair, was one of those guys.
He joined the Army Air Corps in 1944 and started to train as a pilot.
However, the military produced too many pilots and sorted the bumper crop to other jobs, with many would-be pilots ending up in bombers where they manned gun turrets.
“I wanted to be a pilot; I didn’t want to be a gunner,” he said. “I was glad I got to fly, I didn’t want to be a grunt on the ground.”
Emerson was a 19-year-old sergeant in a nine-man aircrew in the 303rd Bomb Group in the Eighth Air Force, which was flying out of England. B-17 gunners were trained to repel incoming Luftwaffe fighters, allowing the bomber to reach its target in good enough condition to drop its bombs.
On Feb. 9, 1945, he was at the tail turret as his bomber flew toward an oil refinery in Lutzkendorf, Germany, when they came under anti-aircraft fire. A plane near Emerson’s was hit, lost control, and collided with his bomber. The tail section, with Emerson still inside and unconscious, was severed from the rest of the aircraft and began a tumble from 25,000 feet.
Sometime during the fall he was flung from the tail. He estimates he must have been at around 10,000 feet when he regained consciousness, and somehow, his parachute opened. He landed in a field, and except for a gash between his eyebrows, he was physically fine, but very scared, he said. The rest of the crew was killed.
It was something he never thought would happen; the B-17 was the most reliable bomber in the Air Corps. It was so much safer that they jokingly called the B-24 Liberator, which is also at Lyons as a part of the tour, the “Flying Coffin.”
“It was another guy who was going to go down, not you,” he said.
He didn’t even wear his dog tags that day, and it’s possible that the Germans could have killed him as soon as they found him.
He didn’t know what to expect when he landed, but he was unarmed and found by farmers. He didn’t understand what they were saying, except that they were calling him a “Chicago gangster” – a term that was used in a German propaganda campaign. He was passed along to the German military and taken into town where he was questioned. Eventually he ended up in a prisoner of war camp in Wetzlar, and later another outside Nurnberg, and finally Moosberg before he and thousands of other POWs were liberated on April 29, 1945. The war in Europe ended nine days later.
Emerson has kept alive his World War II experience and his memories of the Flying Fortress.
He’s researched his wreck, spoken with amateur historians abroad, and has made a trip back to the crash site in Germany. He volunteers at the museum as a docent, where a B-17 that was used as a transport plane is a part of the collection. And he still admires the aircraft.
“I was assigned to a B-17, and I was always glad I was assigned to a B-17,” he said.
