![]() The Wrong Stuff : The Adventures and Misadventures of an 8th Air Force Aviator By Truman "Smitty" Smith Brought about my return to my love of building ARMY AIR FORCE PILOT IN WORLD WAR II by John C Walter and This book, Along with MY WAR: THE TRUE EXPERIENCES OF A U.S. Readers who have read numerous books about the air war in Europe during WWII might not learn much new, but if you go into this book expecting it to be one person’s story based on their diary, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. There were also the heartbreaking moments: parachutes catching on fire as crews bailed out, planes going down with no parachutes at all, and the horrible gut-punch of finding out some of Comer’s buddies didn’t make it back from their last raid. Then get outta there before the MPs show up.ĭespite having read several other books on the air war over Europe, I learned a few new things, like the fact that if the tail gunner’s oxygen goes out at high altitude, and no one finds him for a while, and if both waist gunners pass out trying to help him and create a pile-up of unconscious men, their face may turn black, but they can still (at least in some instances) be revived. The book included a few laugh-out-loud moments, like how to start a bar fight: go into the men’s room while people are arguing, turn the lights off, and push the belligerents into each other. Eventually he was given a pilot’s position and a new crew, but they didn’t last very long. And there was Comer’s original pilot, who got assigned the co-pilot’s position when they arrived in Europe. There was the navigator, who heard about another navigator’s injury and thereafter wore special gear to help prevent castration. ![]() There was the radio operator, who always seemed to think something was wrong with his oxygen. ![]() Crews changed and shifted, but there was enough continuity, at least for Comer (the author), that I felt like I’d met him and some of his fellow crew members. The men who flew the airplanes were just ordinary men (many of them were still boys), doing very hard things. Later, long-range fighter escorts would arrive, and things would improve (and the number of missions required would go up), but in the summer and fall of 1943, multiple enemies-German fighters, flak, mechanical problems, and the weather-seemed to be winning. It was written by a flight engineer/gunner with the Eighth Air force in 1943, when American B-17 crews were taking horrendous losses and the chance of completing a 25-mission tour was slim. ![]()
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