Kevin Maurer - Damn Lucky: One Mans Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History

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To Lucky, thanks for trusting me with your story

OCTOBER 1943

His nickname was Lucky, but Second Lieutenant John Luckadoo felt anything but.

He was on his twenty-second mission flying B-17 bombers into occupied Europe against the Luftwaffe, meaning he was on someone elses borrowed time. Most bomber crew members only made it to ten missions before they either got wounded, captured after being shot down, or lost their lives altogether.

Lucky stowed his gear near the hatch at the front of the olive-green B-17 bomber and walked around the aircraft looking for anything out of place. He was tall and skinny with a boyish grin. He spoke with a soft voice that had just a hint of an accent with elongated, slow, and drawn-out words like the Tennessee River that ran through his hometown of Chattanooga. His face had an innocence, a kind of aww shucks, easygoing look, that masked what hed seen over the skies of Nazi Germany.

Lucky ran his hands along the fuselage and wings and worked the ailerons with his hands up and down to make sure the mechanism was smooth. He checked the connection points on the antenna wire that stretched from the top of the tail to the radio hatch just behind the wings.

As he got to the front of the aircraft, he stopped and looked at the ship. The Flying Fortress looked formidable perched on her front landing gears, her nose peering skyward. The bombers four massive Wright R-1820-97 Cyclone turbo supercharged radial engines towered over him on the 103-foot wings and eleven .50-caliber machine guns poked out of the top, side, and cheeks of the bomber.

The preflight walk was routine before a mission, but not without focus. Lucky knew how important it was because the bomber was the single most important part of the mission. It delivered the bombs, but more importantly acted as a body for the ten-man crew. Each manfrom two pilots in the cockpit to the single gunner in the tailwas tethered to the four-engine bomber and relied on the machine for air and warmth.

Confident the shipnicknamed King Bee was airworthy, he returned to the nose, where a small door was open leading into the cockpit area. No one climbed into a B-17 confident they were coming home. As the war progressed, Lucky realized he was facing not one enemy but four.

Fear of never returning home.

Fighters that attacked with more experienced pilots and better equipment as they aggressively protected their homeland.

Flak from the Nazi antiaircraft guns, which hit American bombers with deadly accuracy.

And freezing temperatures, an unseen enemy in the unpressurized and unheated airplanes that seriously impeded the aircrews ability to function.

All four factors had a devastating effect on the aircrews mind and body. There was no way the aircrews could contend with the pressures of combat day after day and remain the same people. Lucky and others had become indifferent to death. They expected it and were surprised when it didnt come. Mustering the courage to get back into the airplane day after frightful day eroded the will of the aircrews. Some withered under the onslaught and refused to continue to do so. Others, like Lucky, found the stamina to remain focused on the job at hand and carried on. But this mission felt different. This time, Lucky was flying with a brand-new crew.

Replacements.

Almost a month earlier, Luckys original crew completed twenty-five missions and rotated home. For bomber crews in 1943, twenty-five was the magic number. Complete that many missions and you got to board a slow boat back to the United States.

That left Lucky to finish his last four missions with various crews. The crew for this mission, led by Second Lieutenant Maurice Beatty, were strangers. Beatty had been certified for combat by Lucky the month before on a short check ride over the English countryside. His crew had only been with the 100th Bomb Group for a few weeks. Theyd flown half a dozen missionsshort hops to the French or German coasts. Milk runs, essentially. Theyd only once flown into the teeth of the Luftwaffe defenses over central Germany.

It was early October in 1943, and the mission was a daytime raid on the German industrial town of Bremen. It kicked off a weeklong blitz to cripple the Nazi war machine. Lucky was command pilot leading three bombers in the second element of the low squadronor Purple Heart Corner, as it was nicknamedbecause the low squadron was closest to the massive arsenal of antiaircraft guns defending the target.

Nothing about the mission was comforting. It started with a six-hour slog through frigid cold at twenty-five thousand feet, followed by nerve-destroying antiaircraft fire and relentless Luftwaffe fighter attacks before finally dropping on the target. Then the race back to England, likely in a damaged bomber, and landing safely with shattered nerves.

That was success.

Better odds stood hed get picked off by fighters either before he reached the target or after being knocked from the formation by antiaircraft fire that shredded his engines and smashed up the fuselage. Free of the formations protection, the Luftwaffe aces would run them down, ending the mission in either a fiery wreck orif he bailed out safelyin a German prisoner-of-war camp.

Three outcomes: return home, get shot down and become a prisoner, or death. A one-in-three chance of success. No one had to say it. But that made getting into the aircraft the hardest part of any mission.

In front of Lucky, the bombardier and navigator were climbing into the nose compartment door. Waiting his turn, he felt his anxiety rising. Everyone flying bombers had their own way of dealing with it. Small rituals like carrying a rabbits foot or a brief prayer that quickly became a survival mantra.

Lucky had acquired two charms.

The first was tucked in his flight suit. He patted his chest and felt the bound pages of a Bible tucked into the inside pocket. His fingers lingered over a crease in the cover caused by a chunk of Nazi shrapnel. An antiaircraft shell exploded near his bomber on a previous mission, peppering the cockpit with shrapnel. A shard punched through the thin metal skin of the fuselage and dug a trench-like groove down the middle of the leather cover. The metal would have killed him had it not been slowed by distance and the skin of the aircraft before stopping against the thick pages of Gods word.

Luck?

Divine intervention?

Did it matter?

All Lucky knew was his mother wasnt getting a letter from his commander explaining how shrapnel killed him. After that mission, his Bible became essential equipment, no different from the oxygen mask he used to breathe at twenty-five thousand feet.

Next, his hand went to his neck. His fingers searched under the collar of his leather flight jacket and coveralls for a thin piece of silk stocking. He felt the fabric against his warm skin. The stocking was from a girlfriend left behind in South Carolina. Theyd met when Lucky was in flight school. Shed offered it to him, and he tied it around his neck for luck then and now. After giving the stocking a tug, he paused to gather up his courage.