Those magnificent men in their flying machines … wasn’t there some kind of movie with that quote?

Anyway, there were really such men. They were the crew of the B-17 bombers during World War II. Sometimes they had a flight of as many as 500 of these on bomb runs!

The B-17s carried a crew of 10. The pilot and the co-pilot were the only ones who didn’t man a machine gun. There was an engineer in charge of the mechanics of the plane, a radio operator and a bombardier. The rest of the crew defended the airplane. Two waist (side) gunners, a tail gunner and a ball turret gunner. The ball turret was the plastic bubble that hung under the belly of the plane.

I knew of one of these pilots, an old friend Cliff Rankin of Spokane who has passed away at 98. He flew 35 missions bombing over Germany. Fortunately, he was never shot down as thousands were. He said he only had one close call and that was when two of the four engines were shot and quit running.

Roger Gregory is a Vietnam veteran, serving in the 1st Infantry Division, and is business owner in Priest River.