‘Our engines were still running and so were three on the bottom ship,’ Rojohn said. When he realized he could not detach his plane, Rojohn turned his engines off to try to avoid an explosion. He told Elkin and Tech. Sgt. Edward G. Neuhaus, the radio operator, to bail out of the tail, the only escape route left because all other hatches were blocked.

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‘The two planes would drop into a dive unless we pulled back on the controls all the time,’ wrote Leek. ‘Glenn pointed left and we turned the mess toward land. I felt Elkin touch my shoulder and waved him back through the bomb bay. We got over land and [bombardier Sergeant James R.] Shirley came up from below. I signalled to him to follow Elkin. Finally Bob Washington came up from the nose. He was just hanging on between our seats. Glenn waved him back with the others. We were dropping fast.’

As he crawled up into the pilot’s compartment before bailing out, Washington remembered, ‘I saw the two of them [Rojohn and Leek] holding the wheels against their stomachs and their feet propped against the instrument panel. They feathered our engines to avoid fire, I think. [Shirley] and I went on through the bomb bay and out the waist door, careful to drop straight down in order to miss the tail section of the other plane which was a little to the right of our tail.’ Because of Rojohn’s and Leek’s physical effort, Shirley, Elkin, Washington, Staff Sgt. Roy H. Little (the waist gunner), Staff Sgt. Francis R. Chase (the replacement tail gunner), and Neuhaus were able to reach the rear of the plane and bail out. ‘I could hear Russo [Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo, Rojohn's ball-turret gunner] saying his Hail Marys over the intercom,’ Leek said. ‘I could not help him, and I felt that I was somehow invading his right to be alone. I pulled off my helmet and noticed that we were at 15,000 feet. This was the hardest part of the ride for me.’

Before they jumped, Little, Neuhaus and Elkin took the hand crank for the ball turret and tried to crank it up to free Russo. ‘It would not move,’ Elkin wrote. ‘There was no means of escape for this brave man.’

‘Awhile later,’ recalled Leek, ‘we were shot at by guns that made a round white puff like big dandelion seeds ready to be blown away. By now the fire was pouring over our left wing, and I wondered just what those German gunners thought we were up to and where we were going! Before long, .50-caliber shells began to blow at random in the plane below. I don’t know if the last flak had started more or if the fire had spread, but it was hot down there!’ As senior officer, Rojohn ordered Leek to join the crew members and jump, but his co-pilot refused. Leek knew Rojohn would not be able to maintain physical control of the two planes by himself and was certain the planes would be thrown into a death spiral before Rojohn could make it to the rear of the plane and escape. ‘I knew one man left in the wreck could not have survived, so I stayed to go along for the ride,’ Leek said.

And what a ride it was. ‘The only control we actually had was to keep [the planes] level,’ said Rojohn. ‘We were falling like a rock.’ The ground seemed to be reaching up to meet them.

Washington recalled that, from his vantage point while parachuting, ‘I watched the two planes fly on into the ground, probably two or three miles away, and saw no more chutes. Shirley was coming down behind me. When the planes hit, I saw them burst into flames and the black smoke erupting.’

At one point, Leek said, he tried to beat his way out through the window with a Very pistol: ‘Just panic, I guess. The ground came up faster and faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one last effort and slammed into the ground.’ As they crashed in Germany at Tettens, near Wilhelmshaven, shortly before 1 p.m., Rojohn’s plane slid off the bottom plane, which immediately exploded. Alternately lifting up and slamming back into the ground, the remaining B-17 careened ahead, finally coming to rest only after the left wing sliced through a wooden headquarters building, as Rojohn recalled, ‘blowing that building to smithereens.’ Russo is believed to have been killed when the planes landed.

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