A damaged airframe that survives impact can still burn.
The men therefore got out and moved away.
The 1992 reconstruction lists Harry Nelson, Keith Anderson, Gilbert Goldman, Harold Brown, Kenneth Shutts, Art Ward, and Jim Basham among those leaving through the waist area. Colonel Hunter came out through the nose hatch, followed by Douglas, while Alfred Burke was described as the last man out.
An RAF officer then confronted the unexpected American bomber sitting where fighter operations needed to continue.
The remembered line was wonderfully British and almost absurd after everything the crew had survived:
“I say there, you can't land here!”
It contained seven ordinary words.
It also proved something every man in the B-17 desperately needed to know.
They had reached England.
The officer's complaint could only exist because they were alive to hear it.
The danger did not disappear when the engines stopped
RAF personnel needed the B-17 moved.
The aircraft had become an obstruction on an active fighter field.
That sounds like a simple ground-handling problem, but 43-37892 was not a normal parked aircraft.
Its crew did not know what might ignite.
Anderson later remembered an English sergeant asking for help lowering the landing gear so the bomber could be moved. The aircraft had been lifted with supports, and ground personnel wanted its wheels extended.
Anderson refused to climb fully back into the fuel-soaked airplane.
The landing gear used electrical power.
He feared that operating a switch inside an aircraft filled with gasoline fumes might produce the spark everyone had avoided during the landing.
Instead, Anderson agreed to show the RAF men where the relevant switches were. Then he moved away before they operated them.
The gear came down without an explosion.
The RAF crew prepared to tow the bomber from the field.
That is where the final mechanical detail appeared.
The 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association's later account says the damaged B-17 had made the landing with only one engine producing full power. When the RAF winch began pulling the airplane, that engine released from its mountings and fell to the ground.
The event deserves careful wording.
There is no wartime engineering inspection report in the sources examined here stating that mechanics opened the nacelle and discovered a particular bolt, spar, or mount had failed.
The surviving detail comes from the later 398th veterans' account.
It should not be inflated beyond what that source says.
Even without exaggeration, the implication is extraordinary.
An engine that had helped keep the bomber airborne across the Channel was attached so precariously after the mission that towing the aircraft was enough for it to separate.
The pilots could not have known that while crossing the water.
They could feel vibration.
They could watch instruments.
They could hear changes in engine sound.
They could not see the entire engine mounting from the cockpit.
The machine had concealed the full extent of its damage until after everyone was safely outside.
That is the missing detail that turns an already difficult return into something harder to explain.
The B-17 had not merely reached England with two engines stopped.
It reached England while the last useful parts of the aircraft were themselves close to mechanical failure.
The bomber never returned to combat
The official loss record for 43-37892 ends the aircraft's operational history on August 1.
The 398th's loss table records the aircraft as lost at RAF Merston after a crash landing caused by battle damage on Mission 59. There is no Missing Air Crew Report attached to the loss because the bomber had not disappeared over enemy territory. Its crew had returned.
Another aircraft-history compilation gives the next step.
It records that 43-37892 was sent for salvage at the 2nd Strategic Air Depot at Abbots Ripton on August 4, 1944, only three days after the Villaroche mission.
The aircraft had been assigned to the 398th only in mid-July.
The group's aircraft-history table credits it with just four missions during roughly 20 days of service before the August 1 loss.
That short operational life makes the photograph from July 25 especially striking.
The crew stands beside a B-17 that still looks whole.
Seven days later, the same serial number would be lying wheels-up at Merston after crossing the Channel on two engines.
Three days after that, it would be listed for salvage.
A military aircraft can pass from new arrival to combat loss with shocking speed.
There is no long career hidden behind 43-37892.
Its important history happened almost immediately.
The damage was serious in more than one place
The engine that later separated is the most dramatic post-landing detail, but it should not overshadow the other damage.
The B-17 had suffered several independent failures.
Two engines had been lost during the return.
At least one engine had burned after its oil system was struck.
Manual flight-control cables were damaged badly enough for Anderson to see them hanging in the waist.
The aircraft lost roughly 10,000 feet during the dive used while dealing with the fire.
The crew reported continuing control problems.
Fuel leakage was serious enough that the bomber smelled strongly of gasoline after landing.
The aircraft continued losing altitude while approaching the coast.
Bombardier Gilbert Goldman had received a minor head wound from flak passing through the nose.
One bomb initially remained hung up after the bombing run and had to be released manually by Goldman and Burke.
The crew removed weapons, armor, equipment, and eventually the ball turret to reduce weight.
The landing gear remained retracted during the emergency landing.
One of the engines that still provided useful power was later reported to have fallen from its mountings while the aircraft was being moved.
Any one of those problems could complicate a return flight.
Together, they explain why other 398th crews believed the lead aircraft might not make it home.
Mellis's August 1 diary captures that outside perspective.
He was not sitting inside 43-37892 trying to solve its problems.
He was flying another Fortress and watching the lead airplane disappear into trouble.
He thought they had lost the colonel.
Only later did he learn that the damaged bomber had reached southern England.
That difference between inside and outside perspectives appears repeatedly in combat aviation records.
The crew of a damaged airplane may know that an engine is still producing some power.