Weight became the next enemy.
Every pound carried by the damaged Fortress demanded lift.
Lift required airspeed.
Airspeed required power.
Power was disappearing.
The crew therefore began removing whatever weight they could.
Flak jackets went out.
Helmets and loose equipment followed.
Weapons could be discarded.
Anything that did not help keep the aircraft in the air became less valuable than the few extra seconds or feet of altitude its removal might buy.
The 1992 crew account states that Burke, Shutts, Basham, Ward, and Anderson stripped the aircraft of movable equipment, including guns and protective equipment. The ball turret was eventually jettisoned as well.
Anderson remembered the process clearly.
By the time they were approaching the Channel, the crew had thrown away their flak suits. Once over the water, they dropped the ball turret and continued removing everything they could in an effort to lighten the aircraft.
The ball turret was not a small object.
Removing it meant throwing away a major piece of the bomber's combat equipment because combat capability no longer mattered.
The mission had changed completely.
Hours earlier, the B-17's value came from its bombs, guns, armor, formation position, and ability to strike a target.
Now every piece of that equipment was being judged by a new question.
Does this help us reach England?
If the answer was no, the crew wanted it gone.
There is something stark about that transformation.
A heavy bomber takes off carrying the equipment needed to fight.
A dying bomber comes home by abandoning as much of that equipment as possible.
The men were reducing the Fortress toward its simplest purpose.
Four wings and engines had once carried a weapon of war toward France.
What remained now had only to carry human beings toward land.
At some point, even the landing-gear handle was thrown out.
Anderson later remembered that detail because it created a strange problem after they reached England. In their effort to save weight, the crew had discarded almost anything that seemed expendable, including an item they would normally need when preparing to land.
The act sounds irrational until the circumstances are understood.
They did not yet know whether they would reach an airfield.
They did not even know whether they would reach England.
A handle useful during a conventional landing meant very little if the bomber fell into the Channel first.
Every decision was being made in the order that survival demanded.
First, remain airborne.
Second, reach land.
Only then could they worry about how to stop.
Two P-38s appeared beside them
At some point during the return, two P-38 fighters came close to the damaged bomber.
The 1992 398th account says the fighters stayed nearby until England was in sight. The crew remembered their presence as a major lift in morale.
The fighters could not repair a control cable.
They could not replace an engine.
They could not lift the B-17's weight.
Their practical ability to save the crew if the bomber suddenly lost control was limited.
Yet their arrival mattered.
Isolation is part of what makes a damaged-aircraft return so frightening.
A formation of heavy bombers is enormous and noisy. Aircraft surround one another at different levels. Crews can see other men fighting the same winds and the same enemy.
Then one bomber falls behind.
Within minutes, the formation becomes distant.
The sky grows empty.
The damaged airplane is no longer one machine among dozens.
It becomes a single target trying to escape.
Seeing two American fighters beside the B-17 changed that feeling.
The Fortress was still crippled, but it was no longer alone.
The P-38 pilots could watch.
They could report.
They could discourage enemy fighters from approaching.
They could perhaps help guide the crew toward safer territory.
Most important, they represented the direction in which the damaged bomber was struggling.
Home was ahead.
The fighters belonged to that world.
Their presence did not solve the emergency, but it told the men inside 43-37892 that the emergency was moving toward its final stage.
The Channel still remained.
The water changed the meaning of every lost foot
The English Channel is not wide when viewed on a map of Europe.
For a B-17 losing altitude on limited power, the distance becomes something else.
There are no emergency fields in the middle.
There are no roads on which a desperate pilot might place a damaged bomber.
Once the coast falls behind, the aircraft either reaches the opposite shore or comes down in water.
The crew understood that possibility well enough to prepare for it.
The 1992 account says most of the men gathered in the radio room when ditching seemed increasingly possible. That part of the fuselage offered a location where they could brace themselves and prepare for impact.
The men were not abandoning their jobs too early.
They were preparing for the outcome the aircraft appeared to be giving them.
Douglas and Hunter remained forward.
Engineer Alfred Burke continued helping monitor the failing machine.
The others could do little from their normal combat positions. A gunner no longer needed to remain beside a discarded weapon. A bombardier no longer had a target. Combat stations had become unnecessary.
The crew reorganized itself around survival.
The bomber continued west.