This was the period in which the decision not to bail out over occupied territory reached its greatest consequence.
Once the B-17 was over the Channel, parachutes offered a different kind of danger. A man leaving the aircraft could land in cold water far from rescue. A mass bailout could scatter the crew across miles of sea.
The airplane itself, damaged as it was, remained their best lifeboat as long as Douglas could control it.
That relationship between crew and machine had reversed since takeoff.
At Nuthampstead, the men served the aircraft's mission.
Over the Channel, the aircraft served only the men.
Nobody needed 43-37892 to fly another combat mission.
Nobody needed its guns or bombs.
Nobody needed to save it from destruction for military value.
They needed only enough additional flight to place human beings on solid ground.
The Fortress could break apart afterward.
It could be scrapped.
It could never fly again.
Those things no longer mattered.
This is the point at which wartime aircraft stories sometimes become too sentimental.
Men later spoke affectionately about bombers that brought them home, but machines do not decide to be brave.
Metal responds to stress.
Engines produce power until they cannot.
Control systems move when connections remain intact.
The human achievement on August 1 was recognizing exactly what the damaged machine could still do and refusing to demand more than that.
Douglas did not need a healthy B-17.
He needed a B-17 that could stay airborne a few more minutes.
Then a few more.
Then another few.
That was enough to bring the English coast closer.
England finally appeared ahead
The sight of England did not end the emergency.
It changed the available choices.
If the B-17 came down now, the men had a far better chance of remaining in Allied hands.
More importantly, an airfield might be reachable.
The crew was approaching the south of England rather than its home base at Nuthampstead. Returning all the way to Station 131 would have demanded more altitude, more fuel, more engine life, and more control than Douglas could safely expect.
He needed the first usable field.
That field became RAF Merston.
Merston was a fighter airfield in West Sussex associated with RAF Tangmere near Chichester. Wartime records place Merston among the Tangmere satellite fields, and airfield histories describe it as an unpaved or later metal-surfaced field used by RAF and other Allied units. It was built for fighters, not as a normal operating base for damaged four-engine heavy bombers.
A B-17 landing there was therefore not a routine diversion.
Douglas was bringing a large bomber toward a field intended for much smaller aircraft.
He also lacked normal landing options.
The landing gear was electrically operated, but the crew had thrown away the gear handle while stripping weight from the aircraft. More important, the B-17 smelled strongly of leaking gasoline. Anderson later explained that they feared using electrical equipment because a spark might ignite fuel vapor.
They would land with the wheels retracted.
A wheels-up landing in a B-17 presents obvious danger.
The lower fuselage will strike the ground.
Propellers may hit.
Engine nacelles can dig into the surface.
The airplane can swing sideways, break apart, or catch fire.
Any remaining bombs would make the situation worse, although the crew had already dealt with the hung weapon.
A belly landing also created a special danger for the lower ball turret, which is one reason jettisoning the turret before reaching England proved useful beyond simple weight reduction.
Douglas still faced one more problem.
The aircraft had almost no surplus performance left.
The 1992 account says engineer Al Burke called the rapidly falling airspeed to Douglas and Hunter during the final landing effort. The bomber had reached Merston with two engines still functioning in some fashion, but only one was providing full power by the time of the crash landing.
Anderson recalled that Douglas may even have made a go-around before finally putting the aircraft down. He remembered it as a wheels-up landing at an English fighter strip.
A go-around in that condition is difficult to imagine.
A normal pilot who dislikes an approach simply applies power, climbs, repositions the airplane, and tries again.
Douglas had no normal reserve.
Adding power could pull the bomber sideways.
Climbing might be impossible.
The damaged control system limited correction.
Every additional circuit of the field burned fuel and consumed engine life.
Yet landing from an unstable approach could be worse than attempting another pass.
The correct decision was not the boldest one.
It was the one that kept the aircraft controllable for another minute.
The B-17 struck trees before reaching the grass
The men in the radio room could not see the approach as Douglas saw it.
They felt the aircraft descend.
They waited.
Then branches and leaves began striking the fuselage.
The 1992 account says this was their first clear sign that they had reached land. The B-17 clipped trees as it came into the small fighter field. Moments later the belly of the bomber struck the ground and slid across the grass.
There was no graceful touchdown.
The landing gear remained retracted.
The airplane hit hard enough to throw dirt around the fuselage.
The crew braced for the possibility that fuel would ignite.
The B-17 finally stopped.
Every man aboard was still alive.
That sentence can make the event sound finished.
For the crew, the most dangerous seconds may have seemed to begin after the aircraft stopped moving.
The bomber was leaking fuel.
Oil was dripping.
Hot engines and electrical equipment remained nearby.