When His B-17 Snapped in Half at 24,000 Feet— He Kept Shooting

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Why a 19-year-old tail gunner kept firing his machine guns while falling four miles inside a severed B-17 tail section — and became one of only three airmen in the entire war to survive such a fall. This World War 2 story reveals how one farm boy from Wisconsin refused to stop fighting even when physics said he was already dead.

November 29, 1943. Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran, tail gunner aboard B-17F "Rikki Tikki Tavi," knelt at his twin .50 calibers over Bremen, Germany. German flak and fighters swarmed the formation. The bomber fell behind. Eight of ten crew members were killed. Then the fuselage split in half at 24,000 feet — with Moran still trapped inside the severed tail. His parachute was shredded by cannon fire. Both arms were bleeding from cannon wounds. Every law of physics said he had ninety seconds to live.

He kept shooting anyway.

What Moran did during that four-mile plunge defied everything training manuals said about survival. German fighters circling the falling wreckage expected to confirm a kill. Instead, tracers arced wildly from the spinning tail section. The Luftwaffe pilots scattered. They had never seen anything like it — a man in a falling coffin, still fighting back.

What happened when that tail section hit the ground — and the seventeen months that followed — is a story of survival that seems impossible. But it happened. And almost no one has heard it.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: This is entertainment storytelling based on WW2 events from
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