One Small Town Boy: A B-17 Top Turret Gunner's WWII Odyssey

This first-person account describes the vivid and compelling World War II experiences of Jack Goetz, who flew twenty-five missions with the 544th Squadron, 384th Bomb Group based at Grafton Underwood, England, in the early stages of the air war over Europe from mid-1943 to early 1944. During his combat tour, he flew on B-17 bombers over German-occupied Europe as a gunner. These were hazardous missions that resulted in high casualty rates among B-17 flight crews. Jack had his share of close calls, including a crash landing in a crippled bomber and a ditching in the English Channel, which resulted in the death of a close friend and crewmate. After completing his combat tour, he volunteered to be a member of the flight crew that took a group of combat correspondents to the Pacific to cover the end of the war in that theater. His B-17 was the second American aircraft to land in Japan just as the war ended, and he was among the first Americans to visit the atomic bomb-blasted city of Hiroshima.