The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Chapter 3 describes the doomed flights that forced Tony Orsini and Robert Wilson, both navigators, to bail out of their damaged bombers.

Upon reaching Ploesti, Orsini’s B-24 takes a hit from German antiaircraft fire and makes it back across the Yugoslav border before the crew is forced to bail. Orsini recalls that the “surreal” and “unsettling” silence of the parachute-descent from high altitude “caused him to vomit on the way down” (29).

Wilson endures a more tragic experience. On July 15, 1944, a direct hit from German antiaircraft fire damages his aircraft’s fuel tank and leaves the crewmen standing in several inches of gasoline. To ease the load on the rapidly descending bomber, the crewmen toss out everything nonessential. Another B-17 stays close to ensure that everyone on Wilson’s bomber bails out in safety. Wilson and everyone else on board the damaged B-17 bail out in time, but the men in the undamaged B-17 cannot see them through the clouds and do not pull away in time. Both B-17s crash into a mountain, killing all 10 men on board the second bomber. Wilson and the others witness the crash as they parachute to the ground.