"The Bloody Hundredth" Topic

Last Friday I visited B-17 Aluminum Overcast which visited a regional airport about ten minutes from my keyboard. I don't believe this a/c flew over Europe, but a little old 84-year-old guy stationed at the tail wore a baseball hat that read 100th Bomb Group. When he was 19 he flew 29 missions and was shot down as the tail gunner with the rest of his crew on the last mission. I had Googled the 100th BG the day before. The records show the 100th BG lost 177 B-17's during WWII. Two or three other BG's had a few more losses. A Bomb Group has four squadrons. The 100th seems to have lost three and a half times its compliment of aircraft in about 30 months. This short, little old man lived to show me his hat. I asked him if he had any claims. He reacted with eyebrows way up, "Pah!! Every gunner in the box claimed everything." He just did what he was taught, lead and shoot. He sweat so much on one mission he shorted out his electrically heated suit. I put my hand on his shoulder when he spoke to a friend of mine. Such company we keep.

That's a great story.

Glad you got to meet him, and to see the bomber.

One of my neighbors growing up was a colonel in the air force. Apparently, during WWII, he as a B-17 tailgunner, and was wounded by enemy fire, but survived, obviously.

I believe he had some long-term health problems related to that, but not enough to keep him from racing cars as a hobby. He like both British and German autos, owning both a Lotus and a Porsche.

I wish I had been old enough to think to ask him about some of his missions, or what unit he as with.

Same goes for many of my uncles too.

They surely were from a great generation.

What aircraft was shot down in larger numbers than the B-17? I'd hate to guess. What type holds the record?

Probably the IL-2. About 12,400 shot down and another 11,000 lost to other causes. It helps that over 33,000 were produced.
Only 12,371 B-17's were made.

-Binhan

B-24s tended to go down from hits that B-17s survived, so they might have lost more Liberators than Fortresses, but I don't know what the loss numbers were.

The IL-2 sounds like a winner, though.

What aircraft was shot down in larger numbers than the B-17? I'd hate to guess. What type holds the record?

Well, they made 35,000 Bf-109s; how many were still flying at the end of the war?
-Kle.

Bf-109, nearly a third of all manufactured were damaged or destroyed in take-off or landing accidents.
Still that leaves over 11,000 available to be shot down.

I suspect a lot of '109's were also destroyed on the ground in strafing attacks, or by the Germans, when the Allies rolled up to, and across their bases.

I imagine a lot of Zeroes were destroyed during the war as well, based upon the many battle accounts for the Pacific.

I just saw this beauty flying over me yesterday: link

Those 4 big engines make a very distinctive sound. My father, who served in the Pacific, said 100s of them would overfly the island he was on, headed for Japan. That must have been an awe-inspiring sight.