‘When my adrenalin began to lower, I looked around,’ Leek said. ‘Glenn was OK and I was OK, and a convenient hole was available for a fast exit. It was a break just behind the cockpit. I crawled out onto the left wing to wait for Glenn. I pulled out a cigarette and was about to light it when a young German soldier with a rifle came slowly up to the wing, making me keep my hands up. He grabbed the cigarette out of my mouth and pointed down. The wing was covered with gasoline.’

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Rojohn and Leek sustained only slight injuries from the crash, which shocked even the two pilots when they took a look at the wreckage of their B-17. ‘All that was left of the Flying Fortress was the nose, the cockpit, and the seats we were sitting on,’ Rojohn later recalled.

Following their capture, Rojohn said, he and Leek were forced to undress’so they could search us for weapons, which we had thrown out on the way down. They put us into a truck and drove through the countryside to pick up the survivors. The Germans then put us all into an old schoolhouse where we were finally able to talk with each other.’

Even though their lives were now in the hands of the Germans, the Americans were able to find a little humor in the situation. ‘Our captors didn’t know what to do with us because we were in a part of Germany where they didn’t take many captives,’ Rojohn said. ‘They put us in a dark, damp building way out in nowhere. All of a sudden the door opened up and everybody popped to attention. A German captain came in and barked something to his men. I didn’t understand what he had said, but Berkowitz [2nd Lt. Jack Berkowitz, MacNab's navigator] heard the same words and fainted dead away. The next day they brought us back to the schoolhouse. Berkowitz, the only one of us who could understand German, told us the German captain had said, ‘If they make a move, shoot ‘em.’ That was too much for him and he fainted.’

Watching the planes fall piggyback to earth, German soldiers on the island of Wangerooge could not believe what they were seeing — ‘crazy Americans flying with eight motors.’ In fact, the Germans were so concerned that the Americans had developed a devastating new weapon that Berkowitz was shipped to an interrogation center in Frankfurt, Germany, and put into solitary confinement. After questioning him for two weeks, his interrogators gave up on the idea of a new American aircraft threat, and Berkowitz was transferred to a prison camp near the North Sea.

Seventeen-year-old Rudolf Skawran, who was shooting at the American bomber formations from Wangerooge, said his fellow soldiers were ordered by flak commander Captain Dinkelacker to leave the connected planes alone. Dinkelacker wrote in his log book at 12:47 p.m. that day, ‘Two Fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes flew hooked together and flew twenty miles south. The two planes were unable to fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I stopped the firing at these two planes.’ There was no way for Rojohn, Leek or the crew members to know that the Germans on the ground had ceased firing at them.

Civilians on Wangerooge stood and watched with amazement as the two planes flew over them. The youngest spectators ran to Rojohn’s plane and removed what they could get away with quickly — a machine gun and ammunition, some rations and chewing gum.

Little and Chase did not survive their jumps from the plane. Technical Sergeant Herman G. Horenkamp, Rojohn’s friend and the tail gunner for all of his 21 previous missions, had not reported for the mission that day because he had frostbite from the mission the previous day. Chase, who Rojohn and Leek had never seen before and never did meet face to face, was Horenkamp’s replacement that fateful day.

All of the survivors from the B-17 piloted by Rojohn were captured by the Germans almost immediately, as were four other men who bailed out of MacNab’s plane — 2nd Lt. Raymond E. Comer, Jr., Tech. Sgt. Joseph A. Chadwick, Berkowitz and Woodall.

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