The Flight of the Worry Wart

High among the puffy white clouds over Kiel both the pilot and co-pilot of the B-17 Worry Wart were knocked out. Below-zero cold froze the pilot's hands and feet. The co-pilot was dead, a 20-mm. shell through his breast. Ugly flak blossoms unfolded on all sides. In & out among the clouds darted droves of enemy fighters. Worry Wart's chances of getting back to England were next to zero.

Of that flight, Technical Sergeant Art Layfield later told TIME Correspondent William Walton: "When we hit the German coast they were throwing everything in the German Air Force at us. Some thing knocked out half our ship's oxygen system, the half on the pilot's side. Then a bullet tore through the nose. Such a blast of air came in that both pilot and co-pilot began to freeze. One was barehanded, the other had only light dress gloves, and we were above 20,000 feet. Within a couple of minutes the ball-turret gunner had shot down an Me-110 trying to get us, and the radio operator had been wounded. We were getting pretty banged up. Then a fighter made a quick pass at us and sent a shell crashing into the cockpit. Our copilot, Steve Bellovay, was hit clean through the breast pocket. He slumped over the instrument panel, but the pilot never wavered a second. He held her steady, straight on toward the target.

"In my top turret I knew it was a bad hit when blood flecked my glass dome. When I could leave my gun for a moment I went down and pulled Steve back from the instruments, where his weight was making the pilot's job even tougher. I lashed him upright with a piece of chute harness.

"About this time the bombardier let loose his load on Kiel. It wasn't too soon because both the bombardier and navigator were hit a moment later. When the ball-turret gunner came up to help, we lifted Steve out of his seat and laid him along the catwalk above the bomb bays and covered him with flying clothes. We had been handing the captain 'walk-around' oxygen bottles after the regular system got busted. Now we gave him Steve's tube. We saw that Steve didn't need it any more.

"But the captain, Maurice Youngs, needed more than oxygen: he had flak in one arm. His hands were so frozen he couldn't use them. He was trying to run the ship with his elbows. We tried to use the automatic pilot, but it wouldn't work. Then I took over.

"From 18,000 feet I flew the old Worry Wart down about 500 feet per minute, using plenty of speed because we had lots of gas. About an hour and a half later we hit the English coast. Boy, was that a pretty sight! With a little benzedrine in him, Captain Youngs was able to take the controls and bring us in to a perfect landing.

"I sure hope those bombs blasted hell out of Kiel--for Steve's sake."

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