Rybin, Y. Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck researched / Christer Bergstrom, Yuriy Rybin. - Sweden : [s. l.], 2019. - 190 p. : ill.

WALTER SCHUCK FACTS 9 FATES OF SHOT DOWN BOMBER FLIERS Staff Sergeant Frank E. Lewis bailed out “head over heels” from 2/Lt James W. McAfee’s crippled B-17 of 398th BG, which only seconds later exploded. Descending in his parachute, Lewis noticed - when he was down at an altitude of about 1,000 feet - that he was being shot at by German farmers on the ground. Lewis continues the story himself: “I was protected by three German soldiers from being killed by the civilians. They saved my life. Two of them took me into Berlin and Tempelhof airdrome. I was barefooted. My boots had slipped off when my chute opened and I was left with my felt-electric socks which 1quickly tore up running from the German civilians. I ended up cutting my feet badly and had to hobble around like I was walking on hot coals. The idea of me walking that way on the streets of Berlin and the subways must have looked insane. Two things struck me about Berlin - the utter destruction we had wrought on the city from our bombings, and going below to the subways, which were brightly lit and spotlessly clean. The contrast was surreal. In the subway, the Germans, mostly women, were hollering at me. ‘Swine’, I recognised, and words which I finally realised meant that I was a terror flier and a ‘Chicago gangster’. At Tempelhof airdrome I learned from the German Air Force people that they were SS soldiers. The Air Force guys “hated the hated”, the SS - but in my case they saved my life. Pure irony - the German Me 262 pilot at Tempelhof tried to kill me, but the SS soldiers saved my life. The Germans at Tempelhof treated me well. I ate in the mess hall with them while there. I was alone for several days before Tracy, a P-51 pilot, showed up.” A few days later, Lewis, Tracy, Joseph Peterburs and Т/Sgt Paul Krup of Lewis’s crew managed to escape. They joined a Soviet tank unit and spent the last days of the war fighting the Germans on the ground. Many years after the war, Peterburs and Lewis reunited. These are the fates of the crewmembers of the 303rd BG B-17G Henn’s Revenge: Т/Sgt Carl O. Hammarlund bailed out successfully. He came down near Emilienfelde, some three miles north of Liebenwalde, ten miles northeast ofOranienburg. Hammarlund made an effort to evade, and surprised a German Paratrooper who was using the latrine of a farmer. At gunpoint, the German paratrooper was forced to undress, but while Hammarlund got into the German’s uniform, the paratrooper managed to escape. Shortly afterward, Hammarlund was captured by a German patrol. Two German soldiers were instructed to escort the prisoner to a German night fighter base at Liebenwalde. They departed at night time, and the German soldiers shot and killed Hammarlund, claiming that he had attempted to escape. He was buried at the spot where he had been killed. A few years after the war, the International Red Cross informed US authorities of the event, and an American War Grave Commission unit recovered Hammarlund’s body, which was returned to his hometown at Janesville, Wisconsin at the request of his family. In August 1951, a German woodcutter found the remains of a human body in a shallow grave, only partially buried, on Lake Gross Glasgow’s northeastern shore. The woodcutter found a US dogtag and an AGO card, which were turned over to US authorities. It turned out to be the remains of 2/Lt Lawrence L. Fries, the co-pilot in Hammarlund’s Henn’s Revenge. Fries’s remains were brought to a Mausoleum T