There was a story about a B-17 flying combat missions over Europe that got it's entire tail section blown off by 88mm flak and the crew coolly flew it back to base and landed the bird. These machines are the essence of the very American spirit. I don't think anything else in the world that flies is capable of feats like that.
A few years ago a B-52 was flying over Arkansas. The tail gunner lost Coms with the pilot & others ….for some reason he thought the plane was in trouble and he punched out.
Took them awhile to find out WTF happened …..and where did he come down ?
I think they didn’t mess with him , because who wants to punch out if they didn’t think something was bad wrong ?
I think he wasn’t injured if memory serves me.
I reckon they did mess with him
Edit : just found this on the interweb
Roughly 20 years ago a G model gunner did eject unexpectedly, but everyone
else on board knew about it when he went since G model gunners were up front
with the rest of the crew and did use ejection seats. IIRC it was a
Blytheville (Eaker) aircraft which was over Tennessee at the time. The gunner
had dozed off and came awake in a disoriented state. He thought he saw the
bail out warning light and grabbed the handles, rotated and squeezed. They
found him hobbling along a country road and found his seat embedded in a
farmers field. As I recall, he was removed from crew status and never flew
again.
