When This German Fighter Flew Into His B-17 — He Landed With It Still Inside

Why one "troublemaker" airman fought a B-17 fire barehanded for 90 minutes during WW2 — on his very first combat mission. This World War 2 story reveals how the most unpopular soldier in the 306th Bomb Group faced an impossible choice over occupied France. May 1, 1943. Staff Sergeant Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, a ball turret gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, climbed out of his turret into a fuselage engulfed in flames over Brest, France. Three crewmen had already bailed out. The tail gunner was wounded and trapped. Fifteen Focke-Wulf fighters circled for the kill. Every instinct said to jump. Every training manual said a burning bomber at 2,000 feet was a death sentence. His own squadron called him the worst airman they had ever seen. They were all wrong. What Smith did over the next 90 minutes defied everything the Army Air Forces believed possible. He fought the fire with blankets, canvas, a fire extinguisher — and his bare hands. He threw burning ammunition boxes out the waist windows while his skin blistered. He manned the guns between firefighting runs as German fighters kept attacking. The English coast was still miles away. This is the story of the man nobody wanted to fly with — and what happened when he refused to give up on a burning aircraft that everyone else had abandoned. 🔔 Subscribe for more untold WW2 stories:    / @wwii-records   👍 Like this video if you learned something new 💬 Comment below: What other WW2 tactics should we cover? #worldwar2 #ww2history #ww2 #wwii #ww2records