During a practice mission, one of the waist gunners Bill Kellum on B-17 #41-24492‘Lady Halitosis‘ of the 367th Bomb Squadron suffered oxygen failure. In a bid to help the gunner, the pilot Bill Ely put the aircraft into a steep dive losing some 9,000 feet of altitude in a matter of minutes. The dive and subsequent recovery was so severe that the aircraft’s control cables snapped, and part of the starboard wing broke away taking an engine with it.

The aircraft then caught fire and the bomb bay doors became detached. One of these doors struck the rear section of the aircraft with such force that it severed the fuselage at the tail. The rear gunner, trapped inside his position, desperately tried to escape, hammering at the plexiglass and fuselage to break out. With only 1,000 feet of air left, he just managed to break through the fuselage and free himself from his falling coffin. His parachute luckily opened, and he landed safely some distance away south-east of Spalding in Lincolnshire. His luck continued when the remainder of the burning B-17 came crashing down a mere one hundred yards or so from where he was sat.

Rescuecrews from a nearby anti-aircraft gun ran to the scene, but they were unable to get close enough to the wreckage due the ferocity of the fire, and sadly, all six of those left inside perished. During the whole episode only one other crewman managed to escape, ball turret gunner Raymond McAskill who suffered slight injuries.

The event was so understandably harrowing for Bill Kellum, that he was eventually grounded, his mental state rendering him ‘unfit’ to continue on after having only carried out a few missions following his horrific flight debut.

KIA - Pilot Bill Ely, Co-pilot: Edwin Patterson, Navigator: Bill Huhlman, Bombardier: Bob Cameron, Flight Engineer/top turret gunner: Dudley Fuller, Waist gunner: Clinton Goller