Ww2 bomber crew5/16/2023 Unpredictable winds could disrupt the finest calculations. ![]() At first, crews had to rely on dead reckoning - estimating position by speed, flying time and compass. ![]() A standard B-17 crew would have 10 total members with each wearing gear that enabled them to survive inside the unpressurized cabin. From 1936 to 1945, there were 12,731 B-17 bombers built and it would cost about 3.3 million each today. Navigation in the dark was intensely difficult, particularly if there was cloud cover over the ground. The B-17 has always been one of the most noteworthy bombers in WWII. From then on, British bombers would fly mainly at night. Many of the planes were flying so low that when they were hit there was no time to bale out. In late 1939, 21 out of 36 bombers on one sortie failed to return. Missions over Europe were flown by day, and German fighters found the lumbering British aircraft easy targets. Early in the war bomber pilots were taught terrible lessons about their vulnerability. They were preoccupied with obeying their orders, and with surviving. Their contribution to the war effort has been partly overshadowed by the controversy over the saturation bombing of German cities in 1944 and '45, in which tens of thousands of German civilians were killed.ĭuring the war, this was not a debate that concerned most members of Bomber Command. The pilot and co-pilot are in the middle. ![]() Yet there is no official campaign medal commemorating the sacrifices of these men. The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines. The rest of the crew included a tail gunner, a ball turret gunner, two waist gunners, a flight engineer and a radio operator. Some 55,000 aircrew died in raids over Europe between 19, the highest loss rate of any major branch of the British armed forces. Flying in a British bomber during World War Two was one of the most dangerous jobs imaginable.
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