Скачать или смотреть German Test Pilot Had 45 Minutes with Captured B-17 — Found Why Flak Couldn't Stop It

At fourteen minutes past ten on the morning of February twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-three, Second Lieutenant William Lawley pushed the throttles forward on his B-17F Flying Fortress and lifted off from Thurleigh airfield in England. He was the copilot. The aircraft commander was First Lieutenant Robert Campbell. Their bomber was part of the 306th Bomb Group, heading to Bremen, Germany. The mission was to strike U-boat construction facilities that were building submarines faster than the Allies could sink them.
The B-17F they flew that morning was nicknamed "Little Willie." Olive drab paint, four Wright Cyclone engines producing sixty-four hundred horsepower combined, thirteen fifty-caliber machine guns, and a bomb load of four thousand pounds. It was the most heavily defended bomber in the American arsenal, built to fly through walls of anti-aircraft fire that would destroy any other aircraft.