True Stories #388 - Friends in High Places

Elmer Bendiner was the navigator of a B-17 bomber during World War 2. His plane should have never returned from its mission, but strange luck would visit him that day.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-stories-with-seth-andrews--5621867/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what You're about to hear is
a true story. Elmer Bendinger of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania served as
a B seventeen bomber navigator in the Second World War.

(00:22):
The plane itself remains legendary, the B seventeen Flying Fortress,
and Bendinger would go on to receive several medals for
his service, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart.
After the war, he would go on to write a
series of books, including the nineteen eighty book The Fall

(00:44):
of Fortresses. Air Raids across Europe were so deadly during
World War Two, the B seventeen dropped more bombs than
any other aircraft during that war, more than six hundred
forty thousand tons of bombs released over Nazi Germany and
its occupied territories. Before long range fighter escorts were implemented,

(01:09):
these planes had only their fifty caliber Browning machine guns
for defense, and that was against enemy planes. There was
no defense against aircraft shells blasting up from the ground, except,
of course, the metal of the plane itself. Elmer Bendener's
book recounts one mission which involved his plane, the Tondalo,

(01:32):
which had been sent to drop bombs over Castle, Germany,
and it was on that day, during that mission, that
Bendinner's plane flew into a terrible storm of anti aircraft shells.
These twenty millimeters killers sounded like sledgehammers against the fuselage
as they blasted holes in the plane, one after the

(01:55):
other after the other, including a deadly shell that pierced
into the B set seventeen's fuel tank. Now the anti
aircraft guns worked like this. You aren't firing a gun
at the plane directly, as the aircraft would quickly have
flown out of the target area. So instead gunners would

(02:15):
lead the targets. They would aim at where the planes
would be, taking into account speed and direction in a
three dimensional space. Larger caliber anti aircraft shells were on
a timed fuse and they could be set to explode
at different altitudes. Others had proximity fuses, but the twenty

(02:36):
millimeters that were used against the Tondalaiyo those were made
to explode on impact. But somehow, somehow, the shells striking
Elmer Bendenner's B seventeen did not explode, not even the
one in the gas tank, which should have blown them

(02:56):
all to pieces. He and his crew were still there.
They were still flying in what some might call a
mid air miracle, and the entire crew of ten would
continue back to the base airport and land safely. It's
a wonder they didn't jump out of the plane and
kiss the ground. Elmer, who was only thirty five at

(03:18):
the time, said the event was so awesome that he
was shaken. Military procedure mandated that armorers were then to
go out to the plane and grab the shells and
defuse them. After all, this was still live ammunition. These
were bombs that could still go off. They had to

(03:39):
be removed, disabled, repurposed, whatever. But then something strange happened.
The squadron's intelligence unit collected all of the shells for
analysis without saying a word to the crew. Fortunately, the
tenacious pilots of the Tundalayo, a guy named Bowen, followed

(04:01):
the events with great interest. He would find out what happened,
and he would share his knowledge with the crew years later.
According to Fox, when the armorers opened those anti aircraft shells,
they found no explosive charges at all. The insides of

(04:23):
the casings were, in their words, as clean as a whistle,
all except for one a single shell that was not empty,
but which contained a handwritten note penned in the Zech language.
The intelligence unit scrambled to find somebody who could translate

(04:46):
check into English, and when a check speaker was located,
that man read the message aloud. It said this quote,
this is all we can do for you now. It
is believed that the almost all empty shells had been

(05:06):
made by concentration camp Jews who had been forced into
slave labor at munitions factories. It is believed that when
the guards were not watching, the workers sabotaged the bullets
and shells and bombs whenever they could, in an act
of secret and silent resistance. There are many stories about

(05:31):
imprisoned Jews saving lives in clever ways, right under the
noses of those who might kill them for doing so.
It must be said that today's account is sourced in
only one place, in Elmer Bendenner's book The Fall of Fortresses.

(05:51):
Military analysts still wonder about the accuracy of the story today,
and yet many believe that with those shells, with that
play at that altitude, the account is more than plausible,
and given the fact that Bowen Fox had flown twenty
five bomber missions and was eventually inducted into the Minnesota

(06:12):
Aviation Hall of Fame. It's clear that he served and
likely spoke with integrity and honor. I guess today's message
is about the heroes that we never see or hear,
the guardian angels that you and I will never meet,
and the capacity for courage and goodness in times of

(06:36):
great conflict. We'll let the historians and the logicians continue
to ponder this one, but for my part, I am
inclined to give B seventeen navigator Elmer Bendenner and his
pilot the benefit of the doubt that I will call
this one a true story. True Stories podcast dot com