Diving in Viz, Croatia was no accident, I heard, whilst diving the Baron Gautsch out of Pula in , that there was an Island down the coast which had several wrecks, some of them WWII Aircraft, and I could not have let that go without investigation. The B17 was capable of high altitude, m for up to 10 hours with a bomb load of Kg, and it was fast, flying at Kmh with a range of around Kmβ¦β¦.
Doubleday, New York, Clearly the armaments of the prototype, five 30 calibre 7. By the B17 had established itself as the pre-eminent daylight bomber of the war, the RAF keeping to night raids to reduce the loss of valuable aircraft to as few as possible.
He never completed his intended roll and rapid pass under our ship, for one horrible instant he was right there β inches in front and above us. He passed over us with a distinctly audible swoosh followed by a tremendous jar and a whoomp.
I flew in behind the plane, and I could see the gunner lying across his machine guns. There was a huge hole in the side of the fuselage, and the rudder was almost blown away. Her first mission would be 3 days later, 06 th November of and she was destined to bomb Vienna, the standby target would be the heavily defended railway junction at Maribor, Slovenia.
Apparently Military Intelligence believed Maribor was only lightly defended, as is often the case this turned out not to be true. Maribor had been annexed by Hitler back in and had been defended and fortified to protect its rail infrastructure and lines with many 88 and anti-aircraft installations. The raids went well for the Allied Bomb Groups as the aftermath, with the bomb hits of marked over the area of Maribor below show.
