At 9:47 a.m. on January 3, 1943, a young American airman climbed into one of the most dangerous positions in World War II aviation. Staff Sergeant Alan Eugene McGee, a 24-year-old ball turret gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, had already survived seven combat missions over occupied Europe. Like thousands of other aircrew members, he understood the risks. What no one could have imagined was that before the morning ended, McGee would survive something that defied every law of probability.
He would fall more than four miles from the sky—without a parachute—and live.
The Most Dangerous Seat in the Sky
McGee served as a ball turret gunner aboard B-17F serial number 41-24620, nicknamed Snap, Crackle, Pop. The aircraft belonged to the 303rd Bomb Group, operating from RAF Molesworth in England. His position, a rotating glass sphere suspended beneath the bomber’s belly, offered a wide field of fire against attacking fighters—but almost no protection.
Ball turret gunners faced the highest casualty rates of any crew position. German pilots targeted the underside of bombers first, knowing that disabling the turret opened the aircraft to further attack. The turret’s thin plexiglass and exposed hydraulics left gunners vulnerable to even near misses from anti-aircraft fire.
On that January morning, the target was the heavily fortified port city of Saint-Nazaire, home to massive submarine pens supplying German U-boats operating in the Atlantic. The city’s defenses were formidable. American crews referred to it grimly as “Flak City.”
The Mission Goes Wrong
As the bomber formation approached Saint-Nazaire, German anti-aircraft batteries opened fire. Explosions rocked the formation. Several bombers were already down when a shell detonated beneath McGee’s turret, shattering the glass and disabling its mechanisms.
Bleeding from multiple shrapnel wounds, McGee manually cranked the turret into position and pulled himself back into the fuselage. He reached for his parachute—only to discover it had been shredded by flak. There was no backup. No alternative.
Moments later, enemy fighters attacked again. Cannon fire tore into the aircraft. The right wing separated from the fuselage, and the bomber entered a violent spin. The centrifugal force hurled McGee toward a gaping hole ripped into the side of the aircraft.
At approximately 22,000 feet above occupied France, McGee lost consciousness.
The Fall
Unconsciousness saved his life.
Without oxygen at high altitude, McGee’s body went limp. Instead of assuming a streamlined position that would accelerate his fall, his body spread out, increasing drag. His heavy flight clothing added further resistance, reducing terminal velocity.
He fell for more than two minutes.
Below him stood the glass-roofed railway station of Saint-Nazaire, a 19th-century structure built with iron framing and layered glass panels. As McGee descended through thinner air into denser atmosphere, his speed stabilized—but his trajectory aligned with the station’s roof.
At 9:52 a.m., he struck the glass ceiling.
A Perfect Chain of Improbabilities
The impact shattered multiple layers of glass. Each panel absorbed kinetic energy, slowing his descent incrementally. The iron framework deflected his body, altering his angle of impact. Instead of striking the station floor vertically, McGee landed at a shallow angle and slid across the tiled surface.
Against all expectation, he was alive.
German soldiers rushed to the scene, expecting to find a body. Instead, they found a severely injured American airman who was still breathing.
The Enemy Who Saved His Life
McGee had suffered catastrophic injuries: multiple fractures, punctured lungs, deep lacerations, and a nearly severed arm. Blood loss alone should have been fatal. A German military surgeon examined him and made a crucial decision.
Rather than amputating the damaged arm, the doctor attempted a complex repair—reconnecting arteries and muscle tissue under conditions that bordered on impossible. The surgery lasted hours. McGee survived.
For the next ten weeks, he recovered in a German-run military hospital. Despite being an enemy combatant, he received professional medical care that preserved his arm and saved his life.
Life as a Prisoner of War
Once stabilized, McGee was transferred to Stalag Luft XVII-B, a prisoner-of-war camp holding thousands of Allied airmen. There he spent more than two years in captivity.
Life in the camp followed strict routines: roll calls, minimal rations, harsh winters, and constant uncertainty. McGee’s injuries healed slowly, but he regained partial use of his arm. Like many POWs, he relied on Red Cross parcels, camaraderie, and routine to endure captivity.
He never remembered the fall itself. His mind erased the experience entirely—a protective response to extreme trauma.
Liberation and Return Home
In May 1945, German guards abandoned the camp as Allied forces advanced. American troops liberated the prisoners shortly after. McGee weighed barely 118 pounds, down nearly 40 pounds from his combat weight.
He returned to the United States that summer, received an honorable discharge, and was awarded the Air Medal and Purple Heart. The Army classified his survival as extraordinary—but did not fully publicize it at the time.
A Life After the Impossible
Remarkably, McGee did not avoid aviation after the war. He learned to fly, earned his pilot’s license, and built a career in the airline industry, working in aircraft operations and maintenance. He married, raised a family, and lived quietly.
For decades, he rarely spoke about his fall.
It was not until the early 1980s, when historians revisited extreme survival cases of World War II, that McGee’s story became widely known. Scientific analysis confirmed what eyewitness accounts had suggested: his survival required a flawless alignment of factors. Remove even one—his unconscious state, the glass roof, the iron framework—and the outcome would have been fatal.
Returning to France
In 1995, more than fifty years after the mission, McGee returned to Saint-Nazaire for a memorial dedication honoring the crew of Snap, Crackle, Pop. He stood beneath the rebuilt station roof and visited the crash site where his fellow crew members had died.
The moment brought closure—not explanation, but recognition.
A Legacy Written in Physics and Humanity
Today, Alan McGee’s fall is studied by aviation safety experts, medical researchers, and historians as one of the most improbable survivals ever documented. Alongside a handful of similar cases, it demonstrates how physics, environment, and chance can intersect in extraordinary ways.
But beyond science, McGee’s story carries another lesson.
War is defined not only by destruction, but by moments of unexpected humanity—by the enemy doctor who chose to save a life, by the fragile glass roof that became a shield, and by the resilience of a young airman who endured what no one should have survived.
Alan Eugene McGee died in 2003 at the age of 84. His grave marker is simple. It does not mention the fall.
But history remembers.
