How a World War II Tail Gunner Survived a Midair Collision Without a Parachute

As he plunged toward the unforgiving earth, Army Air Forces Sgt. James Raley was stuck.

It was January 1944, and the tail section of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber nicknamed “Skippy” where Raley was positioned as a tail gunner had been severed from the rest of the aircraft in a midair collision. Spiraling from an altitude of more than 19,000 feet with no parachute strapped to his back, he had no means of escape.

"If I were going to die, I wanted to get it over with," Raley recounted in a first-person account of his harrowing experience published on April 14, 1944. "I really thought I was lost."

Raley's account came almost three months to the day after he improbably survived that fall from the skies over Piraeus Harbor in Greece. His crew was part of the 353rd Bomb Squadron, 301st Bomb Group, Fifteenth Air Force, which deployed 21 bombers over the German-occupied country on Jan. 11, 1944. Escorted by P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft, the B-17s were separated into four squadrons that encountered thick cloud cover, significantly lowering the pilots' visibility.

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Intentionally flying off course, the trailing squadrons strived to maintain a safe distance from the lead squadron, but the weather conditions made that virtually impossible. As the bombers climbed higher, two aircraft from the 97th Bomb Group flew almost straight into the 301st's formation. More collisions followed as "aircraft, debris and men were flying and falling through the overcast," according to the 301st Bomb Group's website.

Raley's plane, which led the 301st's second squadron of bombers, was caught in the carnage. He recalled "a hell of a jolt" as the bomber's 12-foot tail section was sheared off from the rest of the aircraft. Crammed into tight quarters and his movement constricted by the pair of machine guns he manned and several hundred rounds of ammunition, Raley could not create enough space to put on his parachute.

But instead of descending at breakneck speed, the bomber's tail spiraled downward, somewhat slowing its velocity, and Raley estimated it took 10-15 minutes for the wreckage to complete its fall. In those frightening moments, thoughts of family and friends raced through Raley's mind. Believing his time was short, Raley relived cherished memories of growing up on a farm, the eighth of nine children, in Kentucky.

"I knew we were spinning around because flashes of blue, green and brown kept flashing past ...," Raley was quoted as saying in a 2019 article in his hometown newspaper. "I thought the whole ship was intact by the way it was twisting around and the time it was taking us to get down. I was praying, too. I was telling myself in another few minutes, I'll be dead."

Except Raley did not die. The tail section fortuitously first made contact with a cluster of trees on a mountainside before stopping abruptly. Raley painstakingly extricated himself from all of the ammo surrounding him, then -- with the escape hatch nearest him damaged and pinned shut -- exited through the bulkhead door. For the first time, Raley saw the full extent of what he had survived.

"There was no plane," Raley wrote. "... I believe if the plane had come down upside down, I would have been killed immediately, with all that stuff flying around when the plane hit the ground."

In his autobiography, "I Fell Four Miles and Lived," Raley recounted gingerly navigating himself from tree to tree along the steep terrain until he arrived at a trail. His chest sore but lacking a full assessment of his injuries, Raley took time to rest before it began to rain. After a few hours, Raley called out after hearing voices and was taken to a Greek monastery where Orthodox priests provided shelter to Allied troops.

Second Lt. Neil Daley, who survived the bombing mission by coming down in a torn parachute, was already there when Raley was brought in.

"He was like a raving maniac and kept repeating, 'I have to tell somebody what happened to me,'" Daley recalled. "One of his legs was badly bruised and various other parts of his body were damaged. He needed, and received, the services of the doctor that evening."

All in all, Raley was fortunate to walk away (albeit initially on crutches) with an injured back and other assorted injuries he brushed aside as "minor hurts." He left the monastery less than two weeks later and departed Greece in early April.

Raley -- who joined the Army in 1935 before transferring to the Army Air Forces in 1943 -- loved being a tail gunner, so much so that escaping death did not dissuade him from returning to one of the military's most dangerous jobs during World War II. Raley would later serve in the Korean and Vietnam wars and achieve the rank of lieutenant colonel.

While Raley's experience is incredible, it is not unique. It is believed that at least two other U.S. airmen fell from such great heights without a parachute and lived. (One of them was another tail gunner who amazingly survived his fall, only to serve two years in German POW camps. He survived that, too.)

That does not lessen, though, what Raley endured. For the second half of his life, Raley -- who died in 1999 at the age of 82 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery -- had an incredible story to tell, one those close to him likely never tired of hearing.

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