From the September 2007 issue: A Downed Navigator Flees for His Life Behind Enemy Lines

“My darling Cornie — This is my first letter to you in almost five weeks!” twenty-three-year-old Lt. Richard G. Fowler, a U.S. Army Air Forces navigator from Minnesota, wrote to his wife Cornelia on May 25, 1944. “And I’m writing it not knowing when I’ll be able to mail it, since believe it or not, I’m behind enemy lines.” After his B-24 was shot down over German-occupied Yugoslavia, Fowler was running for his life. During moments of rest, he wrote letters he knew he couldn’t send, which chronicled his experiences and, most important, helped him feel emotionally connected to his wife. In the first of these letters, Fowler continued:

On April twenty-third we were assigned a bombing mission to carry out that day. We were to go to an enemy airfield and bomb it with fragmentation bombs, so as to destroy as many enemy aircraft as possible, on the ground.

Our take-off and assembly went as usual—a little rough, but without any unusual happening. After two and one-half hours of flying and keeping watch for German fighters, I was almost ready to relax a bit for our rendezvous with our P-38 escort in a few minutes. When our fighter escort is with us, there is little danger from the enemy fighters, so I usually sit back when they appear, to watch any battles that may ensue so I can accurately report the results.

During the engine warm-up before take-off a small oil leak developed in number one engine. It was small but its repair took about fifteen minutes, so we were delayed and could not take our place in the formation, but had to fill in as the last ship in the whole formation—not a good position at any time.

Well, as I was saying, we had been out for more than two hours and were due to pick up our escort in a few minutes. I thought I’d take one last look around, so I poked my head up into the astrodome to see what was going on. I saw what looked like our escort behind us, buzzing around as light fighters can and always do.
At first I assumed they were our fighters, but a second later I saw the guns on the fighter spurting fire. The machine guns on fighter planes are in the wings pointing forward, so when you can see the whole wing span of a plane spouting fire and bullets, you know damned well that plane is an enemy, and he is trying to kill you—it’s not a pleasant feeling.

I didn’t hear our gunners shooting at the German fighters behind us so I grabbed my microphone switch to tell them to begin firing—those are enemy planes! Not our escort, as they probably thought! The switch didn’t work and a second later there was an explosion in the ship! Those fighters had been fiendishly accurate with their machine-gun and cannon fire, and their incendiary bullets had exploded our gasoline tanks. In a fraction of a second, flames had spread all over the plane, and were licking at my feet—I knew we would have to bail out. I quickly looked up in the pilot’s compartment to see if George and John were O.K. All I could see was a wall of flame, so I knew they had died quickly.

The Emerson turret gunner, in the nose, was unaware of what had happened, so I turned around, jerked open the turret doors, and half pulled him out of the turret. By then, flames had filled my compartment too, and I could feel them burning my head and face. By instinct I closed my eyes and held my breath because it is certain death to breath flame….

Before I had opened the escape hatch to try to blow the flame back in the rear of the ship so the turret gunner could escape, so the second my pack was on my chest I fell forward and was out in the cool, soft air—fifteen-thousand feet above the ground! I can remember pulling the ripcord and almost immediately my chute popped-open, giving me a good hard jerk, but it felt wonderful!

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