As we get in our B-17 Flying Fortress, the tensions are high not knowing if we are going to make it back for dinner. As I sit back in one of the eight gunner positions loading my .30 caliber machine gun knowing that I would be shooting at Messerschmitt Bf 109 flying by like a cat chasing a mouse. Now that we 're in the air just over the English Channel, everyone is now making their last adjustments for the long and dangerous task that lays ahead. No one is talking, it’s as quite a store on Christmas morning. Then after what felt like hours of flying in a tin can of a plane, we start hearing voices over the radio but the person on the other in of the radio was not speaking english. It sounded more Russian than any other language but way is there Russians on the other end of our radio? Anyways it finally stop and we continued our mission. By this time the Fighter escort had to turn around and head back to base, we are all alone against the German Luftwaffe.
We finally made it past the French borders and on our way to
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That was a big mistake we ever made. Within miles from Berlin the antiaircraft guns started firing and we were hopeless. We haven’t made it to Berlin and we are taking heavy losses. Ten of our 50 bombers are shot down, that is 100 of men we already loss and we haven’t made it to our mission. Within seconds our B-17 was hit, the rightmost engine was blown off as if someone came up and took it. I started to smell smoke from inside the cabin and the smoke made me remember one of my family members from home, he was a Firefighter putting out the fires in the city that was full of smoke. I thought we were going down but somehow the pilot managed to keep it up. I watched as my best friends was falling to the earth in a great ball of flames, knowing that I might be joining