How One B-17 Gunner's "Suicidal" Tactic Claimed 12 Bf 109s in 4 Minutes

On July 30, 1943, 25,000 feet over Germany, a 20 mm cannon shell exploded inside the tail of a B-17 and shattered the leg of its gunner. His oxygen line was cut, his interphone was dead, and one of his guns was jammed. Staff Sergeant Michael Arooth, a 23-year-old from Springfield, Massachusetts, stayed at his post, cleared the jam, and shot down a fourth German fighter, earning the Distinguished Service Cross.

Crewmates remembered that Arooth opened fire early, before German pilots expected to be in range, breaking the fire discipline his gunnery training demanded. This documentary separates the record from the memory: the four-by-five-foot tail position, the Kassel mission, the disputed victory counts of nine, seventeen, or more than twenty, and why no bomber gunner in the Army Air Forces is recorded as having destroyed more.

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Made for educational and historical purposes, in remembrance of the airmen who flew.

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