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Epilogue. Debriefing Lexington, Kentucky, October 1988. "The purpose ofthis roundtable is unfinished business. When we returned from missions like Munster and Schweinfurt, we were debriefed completely and in depth. Of course we got a tumbler ofbourbon to loosen us up a little so we could talk about everything that happened on the plane-malfunctions, flak spottings, planes shot down, the number ofparachutes that came out. But on our last mission we were not debriefed. In fact we were spread to the winds." Dr. C. Leland Smith's southern drawl was more pronounced than I remembered from forty-five years earlier, when Smitty was the sensitive, inquisitive navigator on our crew. Now a professor of education at the University of Kentucky, he had organized this reunion with the same attention to detail that he had practiced when preparing his maps for a mission. He invited the Bramwell crew and their wives down to his and Sarah's farm near Lexington, Kentucky, and-having a sense of dramaarranged for our "debriefing" to be videotaped before an audience at the university's College of Education for TV news coverage and a follow-up story in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Seated at the table were six surviving members ofthe crewpilot Bill Bramwell, copilot Jim Current, bombardier John Maiorca, navigator Smitty Smith, assistant radio operator Leslie Meader, and assistant flight engineer George Watt. Tail gunner John Craig and radio operator Albertus Harrenstein, killed in combat, had gone down with our ship. Flight engineer H.C. Debriefing 145 Dispersal of the Bramwell Crew /Antwerp 35 km Johnson x X Current Sage x SINTNIKLAAS WAASMUNSTER Smith X B-17 Bomber Crash x (Craig and Harrensteinl LOKEREN p~r~e Bramwellx / Meader 8 km ZELE x Maiorca ..,er ftP xwatt HAMME KILOMETERS 0 SCALE Johnson had died in 1968, and ball turret gunner Joseph Sage died in 1985. Sharing in the wannth of the reunion were Virginia Bramwell , Sarah Smith, Eileen Meader, Marilyn Current, and Margie Watt. Betty Maiorca, unfortunately, was unable to attend. Five of the couples were already married when we went overseas in 1943, and we felt we had beaten the odds. The women too were veterans of the war. Now, for the first time, six of us were able to tell each other what had happened in the last three or four minutes before the plane crashed. William Bramwell had wavy white hair and distinguished looks but was still the same modest, self-effacing guy I remember. When the P-47's left us, he recalled, he still felt we were going to make it. Off to his right was Antwerp, and he could clearly see the English Channel up ahead. Home looked tantalizingly within reach. ] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 00:28 GMT) 146 ESCAPE FROM HITLER'S EUROPE Then everything happened at once: the ear-shattering thunderclap of an exploding 20mm shell in the cockpit, fire, acrid smoke, hydraulic fluid oozing all over, hot metal piercing his right side, and the ship plummeting toward the ground. His body was racked with pain, and he was losing blood, but he thought of only one thing: he had to gain control. While I was helplessly pinned in the waist, reviewing my life in anticipation of the inevitable crash, he and Current were busy fighting the control column with everything they had. The plane dropped some 12,000 feet before they could pull it out of its dive. The phones were dead, so Bramwell sent Current to the nose and Johnson to the rear to see that the men got out. "I set the trim tab all the way back. I stood up between the two seats and held the plane level until I thought the crew in the front was able to get out. Then I dropped down through the hatch and lo and behold, there was Jim lit right on his back. Smitty and John were battling the hatch in the nose trying to get it open. As I recall, I indicated to Jim to go up to the bomb bay. I reached in under the pilot seat and pulled the emergency release for the bomb bay doors. "I don't remember bailing out of the airplane. My next memory is hanging in the chute and my oxygen mask flopping around. I pulled it loose and tossed it away. And it just stayed there!" "I looked up to see about a third of the shroud lines cut, with one line in the center...

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