Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my bomber and me and me,
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my bomber and me.

So sang the crews as the B17 bomber squadrons took to the air to strike German factories in WWII. More than 4,000 did not return. On the raid against the Schweinfurt ball bearing factories, sixty five planes were lost on the mission, sixty over Germany—650 empty beds in the barracks at the end of that day.

There are but a few restored B17s flying today to commemorate the heroic sacrifice of the teenage air crews who fell to capture or death from the fights above the clouds. One of those planes, The Liberty Belle, made a historic flight, retracing the route taken to get the B17s from the United States to England. In 2008, the picked crew and cameramen took to the skies from Atlanta, Georgia, landing in Bangor, Maine, Goose Bay Canada, Narsarsuaq, Greenland, Reykjavik, Iceland, Prestwick, Scotland and finally coming to a stop at her original base at the RAF field in Framingham, England.

Few living people have ever experienced such a flight.  Only the WWII survivors of B17 raids can really tell us about their thoughts and feelings as they rose to the skies, knowing that statistics were not necessarily in their favor, that Messerschmitts, anti-aircraft guns, or their own fellow bombers would not shoot them out of the sky, or that a mechanical failure or loss of fuel could drop them in the freezing channel.

B24 pilot and squadron commander Jimmy Stewart, as fearless a leader as any in the bomber forces over Europe said the fear that haunted him the most was fear of failure: “Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it’s contagious. I knew that my own fear, if not checked, could infect my crew members. And I could feel it growing within me.”

By way of Hollywood depiction of combat in an American bomber in World War II, I recommend you watch “Twelve O’Clock High” and “The Memphis Belle.” (Rated PG-13)The attempts at verisimilitude are admirable and, in the case of the latter film, the youth of the crews provides a stunning reminder that boys right out of high school were the men manning the machine guns. I saw a recent study that the waist gunners had the highest mortality rates on a B17, and the forward and rear gunners a close second.

In the great World War II epic documentary entitled “The World at War” (1972), episode 4 (“Whirlwind: the Bombing of Germany”) shows original footage of bomber attacks and losses and discusses the reality and morality of the bomber campaigns of the war. The results are riveting and provocative.

A unique documentary of the B17 “Liberty Belle,” entitled “The Yanks are Back,” has been produced sixty five years after the war for which it was built. In modern military parlance, the B17 was an aerial fighting platform, which sounds like a stable and safe stage for picking off targets at a reasonable distance. The “Liberty Belle” was anything but an environment of safety and quietude. Why should I give away the plot of this remarkable film?

Come to The Circa History Guild on Saturday night, April 4th at 7:00, to see the World Premier of “The Yanks Are Back!” The cost is $50.00 per person, the proceeds to go to The Liberty Belle Foundation which has to raise a million dollars a year to keep the Liberty Belle in the air. E-mail the Circa History Guild to reserve your seat, bpotter@circahistory.com. Pay at the door. Participants in the flight will be present to answer questions; World War II veterans are invited to attend at no charge; several have already made reservations.

“The Spirit of Liberty Bell,” on loan from The Providence Forum of Philadelphia will be here for viewing for the last time and, need I say it, for ringing to commemorate Liberty.

Bill Potter