At 9:47 a.m. on October 14, 1943, First Lieutenant James Robert Callahan, a 24-year-old pilot from Pennsylvania, sat in the left seat of a B-17G Flying Fortress nicknamed Pennsylvania Steel. Eleven combat missions were already behind him. What lay ahead was one of the most punishing daylight bombing operations of the Second World War: the second major raid on the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt, Germany.
The target was critical. The factories below produced a majority of the precision bearings used in German tanks, aircraft, submarines, and vehicles. Destroy them, Allied planners believed, and the German war machine would grind to a halt. But the cost was known in advance. Three months earlier, the first Schweinfurt raid had lost sixty bombers in a single day. Every man aboard Pennsylvania Steel knew the statistics: one out of every four bombers sent over Schweinfurt did not return.
Into the Flak Corridor
At nearly 28,000 feet, the bomber stream stretched for miles across the sky. The temperature outside was −48 degrees Fahrenheit. Oxygen masks hissed with each breath. Beneath the formation, dark puffs of German anti-aircraft fire—88-millimeter shells—blossomed like violent flowers. Each burst hurled jagged steel fragments through the thin aluminum skins of the bombers.
Callahan held the aircraft steady, resisting every instinct to maneuver. During a bomb run, deviation meant missed targets—and isolation. Isolation meant death. His bombardier lay prone in the nose, eye fixed to the bombsight, calling out steady commands. When the bombs finally dropped, Pennsylvania Steel leapt upward, suddenly lighter by two tons of explosives.
The formation turned for home. That was when the fighters arrived.
The Tail Is Torn Away
German Focke-Wulf FW 190s attacked with unprecedentedch — heavily armored fighters flown in close formation, designed to absorb defensive fire and deliver devastating blows at short range. One of them, armed with air-burst rockets, lined up on Pennsylvania Steel from a blind angle.
The rocket struck the horizontal stabilizer.
In an instant, the entire tail section of the bomber—rudder, elevators, and tail gun position—was ripped away. The aircraft should have entered an unrecoverable spin. The tail gunner was killed immediately. Inside the cockpit, Callahan felt the controls go slack. There was no resistance. No response.
The laws of aerodynamics were unforgiving: an aircraft without its tail cannot be flown. The stabilizing surfaces that keep the nose from pitching down were gone. Yet Pennsylvania Steel did not plunge. It wallowed, yawed, and began a slow descent—but it stayed in the air.
Understanding the Impossible
The flight engineer was the first to identify why the bomber had not immediately fallen. Moments before the tail was severed, the aircraft had dropped its bomb load. The sudden loss of weight shifted the center of gravity rearward. Combined with the trim settings already in place, the aircraft found a fragile, unnatural balance.
Callahan realized that traditional flight controls were useless. The only remaining means of control were the engines themselves. By adjusting power asymmetrically—more thrust on one wing than the other—he could influence the aircraft’s heading. Increasing or decreasing power on all engines together allowed limited pitch control.
It was not flying in the conventional sense. It was controlled falling.
Alone Over Germany
The bomber slipped out of formation. Within minutes, it was alone over hostile territory, descending at roughly 300 feet per minute. German fighters circled back, sensing an easy kill. Without its tail guns, Pennsylvania Steel had lost a quarter of its defensive firepower.
The remaining gunners compensated. Waist and top-turret gunners coordinated their fire, tracking attackers that now approached from angles the bomber could barely defend. Cannon shells tore through the fuselage. One engine caught fire and was shut down. Another began to run rough. Hydraulic systems failed. Instruments shattered.
Yet the bomber continued south.
Callahan faced a brutal choice. Reaching England was impossible. Bailout over Germany meant captivity—or worse. The only remaining option was neutral Switzerland.
The Race to Neutral Airspace
Switzerland lay nearly 300 miles away, across mountainous terrain that rose toward the Alps. At their rate of descent, the crew had less than an hour before altitude made the crossing impossible. Turning south meant flying deeper into Germany, away from Allied protection, and directly through additional flak zones.
Callahan chose Switzerland.
The crew worked with methodical calm. Fuel was transferred to balance weight. Damaged valves were forced open by hand in sub-zero temperatures. The navigator plotted by dead reckoning as landmarks slid beneath them. Each decision was made deliberately. Panic had no place here.
German fighters attacked again near the border, but standing orders prevented them from pursuing too close to neutral airspace. As Pennsylvania Steel crossed into Switzerland, the attackers peeled away.
The Final Test: Landing Without a Tail
Swiss fighters intercepted and escorted the bomber toward Dubendorf Airfield near Zurich. International law required Switzerland to intern both aircraft and crew. The Swiss also prepared emergency services, fully expecting a crash.
The landing presented its own nightmare. Hydraulic damage meant the landing gear had to be lowered by hand—hundreds of turns of a crank. The nose gear refused to deploy. The bomber would land on its main wheels and nose.
At 11:17 a.m., Pennsylvania Steel touched down.
The main gear absorbed the initial impact. For three seconds, the nose hovered. Then gravity took over. The nose slammed onto the runway, grinding metal and plexiglass across concrete. Sparks flew. The aircraft skidded, shedding debris, until it finally stopped with less than a thousand feet of runway remaining.
Against all expectations, eight men climbed out alive.
Internment and Aftermath
The crew was interned in Switzerland for the remainder of the war. Conditions were humane but restrictive. They followed the conflict from afar as the air war intensified and Germany eventually collapsed.
After the war, the men returned home. Callahan was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving his crew. He never flew again; nerve damage from shrapnel ended his piloting career. Others built quiet lives—engineers, teachers, restaurateurs, mechanics—rarely speaking about the ninety minutes when they defeated physics together.
Why the Story Endures
A B-17 flying without a tail should not stay airborne. Aerodynamic models say it cannot. Yet Pennsylvania Steel did—because of timing, weight distribution, engine power, human ingenuity, and extraordinary discipline under pressure.
Military historians still study the incident as one of the most remarkable examples of emergency aircraft control in aviation history. Not because it rewrote the laws of flight, but because it showed how narrow the margins between loss and survival can be.
Eight men lived because one crew refused to surrender to inevitability.
And somewhere beneath the fields of Germany, the tail of Pennsylvania Steel fell away—while the rest of the aircraft, impossibly, kept flying.
