Accidental Loop in a B-17 in 1944

[Warbirdnerd]

John ‘Reds’ Urban helped fly a B-17 that nosed up and into a loop after another bomber crashed across its tail. The photo shows Urban’s plane after making it back to England. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO / March 3, 2011)

In the nearly 20 years Ed Krupa knew him, John Urban never let on that he had done anything extraordinary as a World War II bomber pilot.

"He never said anything about the loop," Krupa said.

Urban, a civic leader and lifelong Nazareth resident known as Reds, died in 2001. Krupa learned his secret last year: On a fiery mission over Germany in 1944, Urban's B-17 performed a feat so spectacular it made headlines around the war-torn world.

With much of its tail section sheared off, the four-engine Flying Fortress — a heavy aircraft not built for aerobatics — shot straight up and onto its back, then swooped down in an arc. It was a complete, accidental inside loop.

"I thought, wow! It was an amazing thing to do a loop, and John never talked about it," said Krupa, a private pilot. "The story was hidden in history."

Krupa read about the maneuver after Urban's widow lent him her husband's scrapbook.

"Flying Fortress does inside loop: Navigator sticks to ceiling, drops on his head as plane swings back to normal," reads a headline from the Omaha Daily Journal. The Daily Express of London reported: "Battered Fort does full loop, but gets home." The Easton Express ran a photo of Urban and crowed, "Nazareth pilot on B-17 which did 'impossible.'"

"John and I would discuss aviation," said Krupa, a retired dentist in Nazareth. "But John never said any more than that he flew a B-17. He just said that he was a copilot and he flew so many missions to Germany, and just left it be."

Krupa and his wife, Dee, knew John and Anna Urban from Holy Family Catholic Church in Nazareth and a church-related charity fundraiser both couples helped run. Last year, Krupa asked Anna: "Whatever happened to John's stuff?"

"I have a book," she said. "I'll get it to you."

The scrapbook is a neatly kept but time-worn collection of photos, reports and clippings chronicling Urban's service with the Army Air Forces, including his flight records and even a fabric map of Europe he carried in case he was shot down.

Its contents include proof of Urban's valor: a July 1944 report by the operations officer of the 364th Bombardment Squadron certifying Urban had completed 25 missions. It lists the date and destination of each, as well as Urban's decorations — three Air Medals for meritorious achievement and the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism.

There's also a six-page typewritten account of the loop attributed to Urban, who was a second lieutenant and the plane's copilot, and 1st Lt. John W. Raedeke, the pilot. It's posted on numerous websites.

In technical detail, the undated account tells what happened on the Jan. 11, 1944, mission to Halberstadt, Germany. But Raedeke, 28, of Waterville, Minn., summarized the drama in a wartime interview with the United Press news agency. Here's what went out on the wire:

"Fighters were pouring in from all directions. Our top turret gunner hit a Focke-Wulf 190 which exploded right in front of us and shunted off to the right, colliding with the Fortress next door. That Fort went up on its tail and fell across our tail, taking away most of the stabilizing rudder and one-third of the left horizontal stabilizer and elevator.

"That sudden pressure on our tail threw our nose up and put us in a complete loop. [Urban and I] realized we could not bring her back, so we grabbed the control column and helped the plane continue through its arc. When we came out, we slipped into a left wing spin. After two turns, I ordered the crew to prepare to bail out and put all possible pressure forward on the controls.

"We dropped [from 19,000 feet] to 12,000 feet and began a straight dive. The tail gunner yelled that five German fighters were on our tail, so I let the ship continue to dive. The air speed indicator showed well over 400 mph. We finally hit a cloud at 4,500 feet and stayed in it until we shook the fighters."

John Urban was 22 at the time, and on his fifth mission.

The B-17, nicknamed Hit Parade, reached England and landed at a Royal Air Force base with a flat tire and only five minutes of gas in its tanks, Urban noted in his scrapbook alongside photos of the plane's damage. One of the 10 crew members was injured — a waist gunner, who broke his heel during the loop. The Hit Parade was junked.

The UP reported the loop tale was the topic of "much scientific debate among fliers in London bars … who shook their heads in disbelief." Until then, they hadn't heard any reports of B-17s doing loops and assumed such a maneuver was out of the question.

But aviation expert John J. Ruddy of Leesburg, Va., said recently that the story makes sense.

The plane had already dropped its bombs and burned off thousands of pounds of fuel, making it less resistant to the doomed B-17 crashing down across its tail, he said.

The impact forced Hit Parade "to immediately rotate to an almost vertical nose-high position …and around its pitch axis, sort of like a seesaw going up too high and wanting to go over backward," said Ruddy, a retired United Air Lines pilot, aircraft mechanic and aerobatic flier.

As a result of the "rotational impact," Hit Parade could "simply flip over backward and wind up positioned as if it were approaching the bottom half of an intentional loop maneuver," Ruddy said.

"I am inclined to buy the guys' story."

Anna Urban, a spry 90, has no doubts about it. Her husband had told her once about the danger his plane was in that day, and he was a straight shooter.

"He never bragged about anything, and I never asked him too many questions, because I thought if he wants everybody to know, he would tell us."

Anna met John in the Holy Family grade school in the 1920s. She was Anna Karlowitch then and lived in the borough's ethnic west end. Her father, a native Austrian, walked to work at the Lone Star Cement mill.

Urban was 6 weeks old when his father, also an Austrian immigrant, was killed in a Bath car crash. His mother then married a widower with children of his own.

The family lived in Dexter, a row of crude company houses built along Route 248 for workers at Dexter Portland Cement, later Penn-Dixie Cement Plant 4. In Urban's house, only a parlor heater kept the family warm. To get to school, he walked through a quarry. Other kids called him Reds because of the tint to his face.

Urban graduated from Nazareth High School in 1939 and signed up for what was then the Army Air Corps. His stepfather wanted him to have a better life than his own.

"His father would not let him go to the cement mill," Anna said. "He told the supervisors: 'Don't you ever hire my son.'"

Urban became an aircraft mechanic, then a pilot. Returning after his 25 combat missions, he wrote to Anna in the fall of 1944 from a string of stateside bases. In February 1945, they were married.

The couple raised a son and a daughter as Urban worked in the plant office at Penn-Dixie, keeping the books. When the cement maker closed, he got a job at the state unemployment compensation center and Anna sewed at a small Nazareth factory.

All the while, Urban served as a borough councilman and auditor, as chairman of the municipal authority, as a member of the Civil Service Commission, as secretary of the school board — and held leadership posts at Holy Family Church.

"He was always involved with something," Anna said. "He knew what the town was all about."

After almost three decades in the Air Force Reserve, Urban retired as a major. He lost a leg to diabetes, and prostate cancer came later. He died at age 80.

Paging through Urban's scrapbook, Ed Krupa, 76, gets misty-eyed over the sacrifices his friend made for his country.

"Me being a pilot, I know what it's like to fly an airplane. I put myself in John's position. When I'm up there flying, I can't imagine what it's like being at 25,000 feet, freezing cold, flak all over the place, people trying to shoot you down. I just can't imagine what it's like to be in those conditions, not once but 25 times."

Like millions of other World War II veterans, Reds Urban came home and got on with his life.

"He never wanted to say much about it, because he figured, hey, it's over," Krupa said. "But I read about him and I thought, this is really something. It should go further than just me."

david.venditta@mcall.com

Found it here:
http://www.mcall.com/entertainment/mc-e ... full.story

[old iron]

Wasn't there a similar story about a B-17 doing a barrel roll after an AA shell exploded under one wing?

[The Inspector]

The story goes, and was reported in several Washington State newspapers, that shortly before he passed in 1998, Alvin 'Tex' Johnston while giving a presentation @ Fairchild AFB took the commander of the KC-135 squadron then based there with him into a 135 simulator and showed him how to barrel roll a KC-135 like he had done in 1955 with the dash 80 over Lake Washingtons Gold Cup boat races. Like Tex told the press about the dash 80 roll 'as long as you keep the pumps covered by maintaining 1G positive, the airplane has no idea where it is in the sky'.

So I can believe looping a B-17 just out of a sense of preservation and 'well, why not? we're probably dead anyway' Look at the China Air 747 roll and dive, the Evergreen 747 freighter steep dive, the TWA 727 barrel roll, all three airplanes were junked, but they survived!

So it's important to try and get these stories before the first person participants are gone along with the achievement.

[Steve Nelson]

I remember once reading an account by a B-17 crewman who said he saw another aircraft damaged by enemy fire, then complete three complete loops (losing several thousand feet of altitude each time) before disappearing from view.

SN

[steve dickey]

Not trying to throw the thread, but wasn't there a B-29 that was looped or rolled stateside or in theater?

[The Inspector]

THAT would be interesting to witness!!!

[Randy Wilson]

Well, when I was last checking on our B-29 FIFI in Addison a month or so ago, there was a visitor who was a B-29 command pilot there who said that in one of the Tokyo fire raids, he had found himself upside down, due to the updrafts from the fires and an outboard engine out (lots of three-engine time was common on B-29s in WWII), and had to do a full roll to come out of it. I would not doubt such things did happen. Randy

[p51]

I was at the 91st BG reunion in Tacoma I think in 2001 (maybe 2002) and there was a pilot there who said he'd seen a B-17 looped in combat, and that he personally had barrel rolled one when his co-pilot got wounded, was out of control and rolling until he could get it level. He said he'd lost about 2-3K feet in the process but got her level. Then right behind him, another vet slapped him on the back and said, "I saw you do that, we all thought you were a goner!" which to me, is all the proof I think the man would ever need!

[agent86]

looping a trashed B-17 sounds like fun to me,but I'm damaged and have issues

[agent86]

Well, when I was last checking on our B-29 FIFI in Addison a month or so ago, there was a visitor who was a B-29 command pilot there who said that in one of the Tokyo fire raids, he had found himself upside down, due to the updrafts from the fires and an outboard engine out (lots of three-engine time was common on B-29s in WWII), and had to do a full roll to come out of it. I would not doubt such things did happen. Randy

at the time the R-3350's had a number of issues and failure was common.I wouldnt want to fly the distances they did with flawed engines.oh and one more thing,I love warbirds and big piston engines but I only fly in turboprops.

[cwmc]

The TWA 727 was rebuilt and flew on for years before being sold to Fed Ex, they flew it for years after that. It never really rolled, it rolled to about 90 degrees and the nose fell through to near vertical. It did go super sonic, though.
Chris...

[TonyM]

If I am not mistaken, but I remember that there is video/film footage of a B-17 rolling all the way before entering a spin during a shoot down over Europe. See The World at War series, episode titled "Whirlwind" and in Wyler's "Memphis Belle."

I'll check on these today.

TM.

[whistlingdeath77]

wow

[Robbie Roberts]

Well, when I was last checking on our B-29 FIFI in Addison a month or so ago, there was a visitor who was a B-29 command pilot there who said that in one of the Tokyo fire raids, he had found himself upside down, due to the updrafts from the fires and an outboard engine out (lots of three-engine time was common on B-29s in WWII), and had to do a full roll to come out of it. I would not doubt such things did happen. Randy

If you read the book "Target: Tokyo" about the B-29 fire bombing raids(as opposed to the one about Richard Sorge, the top Soviet Spy in wartime Japan), it does talk about the tremendous updrafts and down drafts created by the fires as they joined together into one mass conflagration throughout the city of Tokyo. The bombers would hit them, and be thrown several thousand feet straight up, and flipped at times. Very harrowing reading. These raids(conceived by Gen. Curt LeMay) actually did more damage than, and killed many times the number killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Scott

[TonyM]

If I am not mistaken, but I remember that there is video/film footage of a B-17 rolling all the way before entering a spin during a shoot down over Europe. See The World at War series, episode titled "Whirlwind" and in Wyler's "Memphis Belle."

I'll check on these today.

TM.

Not a B-17 loop story but there are two instances on video of B-17s performing rolls while being shot down. Both can be found in the "Whirlwind" episode of The World at War documentary series. I know one of the same airplanes can be seen in the Wyler film and in color. You can see the sun glint off of the front windscreen as the ship rolls over.

I do know of an accident involving a B-24 near Dinjan, India, in 1943 where the ship, which was heaviliy iced, looped about three times before it suffered a catastrophic structural failure of the tail section. One witness stated that he thought that the airplane was doing Cuban-Eights with a half roll.

TM