The Day the B-17 Broke

At 11:47 a.m. on November 29th, 1943, the sky above Bremen, Germany, was a frozen hellscape of smoke and fire. Inside the cramped tail section of the B-17F Flying Fortress Ricky Tickabi, 19-year-old Staff Sergeant Eugene Moran, a farm boy from Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, was flying his fifth mission. The Flak was relentless, German anti-aircraft fire tearing into the fuselage with deadly precision.

The mission, launched hours earlier from RAF Snetterton Heath in England, was part of a major assault by the Eighth Air Force’s 96th Bomb Group on Bremen’s industrial heart. The city was a known hornet’s nest; Moran’s squadron had already lost 11 tail gunners that autumn.

Moran, isolated in his tail position, manned his twin .50 caliber Browning machine guns, a lonely sentinel in the sky. He had already tracked and fired upon German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters, scoring a hit that sent one trailing smoke. Then, the black bursts of Flak began.

“Each burst sent shrapnel fragments traveling at 3,000 feet per second.”

The aircraft shuddered under the impacts. The intercom went silent, severing him from the eight crewmates in the main body of the bomber. Through his window, Moran watched in horror as Ricky Tickabi fell behind the formation, instantly drawing a swarm of German fighters. A massive explosion consumed the nose section—the pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator, and flight engineer were instantly gone. A shell tore through the radio compartment, killing three more in the waist.

Moran was one of two men still alive. The navigator successfully bailed out. Moran grabbed his parachute—it was useless, shredded by shrapnel and bullet holes. He was alone, 20,000 feet up, with no way out.

The Glide

Then came the hit that defied comprehension. A direct Flak strike severed the entire tail assembly from the fuselage. The explosion was deafening, the lurch sudden and violent. Moran was falling, still strapped inside the metal enclosure, 20,000 feet above the German countryside.

Yet, a miracle of wartime engineering—and physics—occurred. The tail section did not plummet to terminal velocity. The 13-foot vertical stabilizer and the 43-foot horizontal stabilizers acted as massive air foils. With the heavy guns, ammunition, and Moran himself creating a natural balance point at the forward end, the section began a controlled, slow descent. It was a terrifying, spinning glide.

Moran’s military training had no manual for this. But his guns still worked.

German fighters, circling below, assumed the severed wreckage was harmless debris. When one swooped past, Moran aimed and fired. The tracers arced across the sky, stunning the German pilot who banked away, having just been shot at by a piece of falling bomber. Moran continued firing as his metal coffin spun slowly downward, descending at an estimated 70 mph instead of the lethal terminal velocity of a free fall.

He was now being targeted by both fighters above and German anti-aircraft crews below, all while falling inside a 4-mile-high chunk of aluminum. Inside the spinning section, the pressure was immense: “Gold fillings and his molars popped out.” With the escape hatch warped and jammed, Moran was locked inside, helpless, descending through the cold German sky toward the ground rushing up at over 100 mph.

The Forest and the Doctors

The salvation came from the unlikeliest of sources: the dense pine forest outside the town of Psycc (12 miles south of Bremen). The trees, towering over 80 feet, acted as nature’s arrestor cables.

At 1,000 feet, the tail section plunged into the canopy. The impact was a sustained, violent deceleration. Branches snapped, wood exploded, and the metal framework groaned. Crucially, the vertical stabilizer caught on a thick trunk, causing the entire section to pivot and slow. The canopy reduced the speed from 70 mph to an estimated 30 mph before it finally hit the forest floor.

The pain was immediate and catastrophic. Moran’s head smashed into his gunsight, cracking his skull. His ribs, already fractured, broke completely, likely puncturing a lung. Both forearms snapped against the gun mounts. Moran was alive, but barely conscious, drowning in his own blood.

Then, a second, profound miracle: Two men appeared through the wreckage. They wore tattered clothing, not German uniforms. They were Serbian prisoners of war, both trained doctors, forced to work in nearby labor camps. They had witnessed the crash.

With no equipment, no medicine, and German patrols minutes away, the doctors worked with desperate speed. They used strips of cloth torn from their own shirts to bind Moran’s shattered arms and applied pressure to his severe head wound.

When German Wehrmacht soldiers arrived, rifles raised, they lowered their weapons at the sight of the bloodied, barely breathing airman. Recognizing the severity of his injuries, and perhaps acknowledging the Serbian doctors’ expertise, the Germans agreed to transport Moran—accompanied by the doctors—to a military hospital in Bremen, the very city he had tried to bomb hours earlier.

Survival and the Prison Camp

At the German military hospital, the doctors were astounded. A crushed skull, broken ribs puncturing his lungs, shattered forearms, and massive blood loss. By every medical standard, Moran should have been dead. The Serbian doctors stayed by his side, tending to him through the night. The German medical staff, despite wartime priorities, provided what supplies they could spare.

Moran stabilized after four days, only to face interrogation. He gave the intelligence officers only his Rank, Name, and Serial Number for two weeks before they gave up.

On December 17th, 1943, Moran, with his arms in makeshift splints, arrived at Stalag Luft III, a prisoner of war camp holding 10,000 Allied airmen. His journey of survival had traded one kind of hell for another.

The Injuries: Without proper medical care, Moran’s forearms healed incorrectly, fusing at wrong angles. He regained limited function but was permanently twisted. Simple tasks—buttoning a shirt, holding a spoon—became impossible.

Life in Captivity: Moran endured freezing temperatures (down to 20° below zero), minimal coal rations, and a diet of thin soup and one slice of black bread per day. He relied on the generosity of other prisoners who shared meager Red Cross parcels and helped him with daily tasks.

The Great Escape: Moran was present for the dramatic events of March 24th, 1944, when 76 men escaped through the tunnel “Harry.” He watched the camp fall silent when the names of the 50 executed prisoners were posted on the bulletin board.

The 600-Mile Death March

The worst was yet to come. In January 1945, with the Soviet forces rapidly advancing from the east, German guards ordered the evacuation of Stalag Luft III. At 4:00 a.m. on January 27th, in a raging blizzard and temperatures as low as 15 degrees below zero, 10,000 prisoners were forced onto the road, beginning the infamous 600-mile death march west, away from the Soviet front.

The conditions were horrific:

12 hours of walking per day with minimal 10-minute breaks.

No rations from the guards; men starved, eating frozen potatoes, bark, and even rats.

Infection and Frostbite: Moran’s feet blistered, burst, and became severely infected. Men who stopped walking were shot and left to die in the snow. Seventy-three men died during the first month.

Moran, fueled by sheer, stubborn will, kept moving. His arms ached, his ribs throbbed, and his infected feet screamed with every step, but the Wisconsin farm boy refused to fall behind.

After 47 days of walking, the surviving prisoners were herded into an old, abandoned factory in Bitterfeld. For three weeks, they were left to rot. Guards brought no food or medicine. Dysentery spread. Moran’s weight dropped below 100 lbs. His ribs showed through his skeletal frame, and his feet were turning gangrenous.

Liberation and the Long Road Home

On April 10th, 1945, the sounds of American artillery and small arms fire echoed through Bitterfeld. The German guards abandoned the factory. On April 11th, 1945, at 2 p.m., soldiers from the 104th Infantry Division kicked open the doors.

The American soldiers were stunned by the sight and the stench—hundreds of skeletal men, lying in their own filth. A medic found Moran, barely breathing, his pulse weak, his feet black with necrosis.

Moran was rushed to a field hospital. Doctors cut away his boots, considered amputation, but saved his feet through the use of sulfa drugs and penicillin. He spent months recovering, first in France, then aboard a hospital ship back to the United States.

On July 11th, 1945, the ship docked in New York Harbor. Moran, standing on deck as the Statue of Liberty came into view, broke down in tears.

He had been gone for 2 years and 9 months. He had endured five combat missions, a four-mile fall inside a severed bomber tail, 17 months in a POW camp, and a 600-mile death march. He was 21 years old.

A Life Well-Lived

Moran’s medical report filled 11 pages: crushed skull, improperly healed forearms, fractured ribs, nerve damage, organ damage from malnutrition, and post-traumatic stress. He refused the recommended three months of treatment, saying he only wanted to go home.

Returning to Soldiers Grove, Moran struggled to integrate. The twisted angles of his forearms, the pain in his feet, and the constant nightmares were enduring scars.

In 1947, he met Helen at a church social. They married and raised nine children. Moran worked construction jobs, never complaining, rarely speaking of the war unless directly asked. He simply went about the work of building a life.

For decades, his story remained untold, known only to his immediate family. It was only in 2007, after a local newspaper article caught the attention of military historian John Armster, that the details began to surface.

Armster meticulously researched the event, confirming the crash of B-17 Serial Number 42-30359 and finding the Missing Air Crew Report. He teamed up with German researcher Ulf Kac, who had located the impact site near Psycc, still littered with pieces of aluminum 70 years later.

The Physics of Survival

Armster and Kac consulted with aeronautical engineers to understand the physics of Moran’s survival. The conclusion was a perfect, improbable alignment of factors:

Drag-Inducing Wreckage: The massive vertical and horizontal stabilizers of the tail section, normally used for control, generated just enough lift and drag to create a stabilizing glide, reducing the descent speed from a lethal terminal velocity to roughly 70 mph.

Weight Distribution: The guns and Moran were situated at the forward end, creating the perfect balance point for the section to glide like a heavy shuttlecock, rather than tumbling uncontrollably.

The Pine Canopy: The 80-foot-tall pine forest acted as a multi-stage decelerator. The initial impact on the branches absorbed energy, and the final catch of the vertical stabilizer on a thick trunk dramatically slowed the final impact speed to perhaps 30 mph—still brutal, but survivable.

Only two other airmen are documented to have survived similar falls: British tail gunner Nicholas Alchemade (who fell 18,000 feet) and American ball turret gunner Alan McGee (who fell 22,000 feet). Both were young, physically fit, and hit objects that broke their fall.

Moran himself never spoke of luck. He lost eight crewmates, endured captivity, and suffered lifelong physical pain. Yet, he lived.

Final Honor

In 2018, exactly 75 years after the crash, Armster and Kac organized a commemoration in Psycc, Germany. Six of Moran’s children traveled to the German forest and stood at the crash site. They met German citizens who remembered the day and the grandson of one of the Serbian doctors who had saved their father’s life. The town erected a memorial plaque listing the names of all 10 crew members.

Moran died four years earlier, on March 23rd, 2014, at the age of 90. He had lived 69 years after his impossible fall.

In 2008, the town of Soldiers Grove dedicated a street in his honor, naming it Moran Way. When asked how it felt to have a street named after him, Eugene Moran, the Wisconsin farm boy who fell four miles and refused to die, simply said, “He had only done what he had to do. Survive, come home, live his life.”

His story is a testament to the unyielding strength of the human spirit.

Would you like me to research and summarize the story of one of the other airmen who survived an incredible fall, like Nicholas Alchemade or Alan McGee?