Fly Until You Die

As we finished the Fourth of July weekend, we are reminded of the fight for independence that began this great nation.  Although The Declaration of Independence from England was voted into effect on July 2, 1776, it was not formally announced until the fourth.  Of course, by that time, the Revolutionary War was over a year old, having begun at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.

Many other battles and wars would be fought following that first War.  Technology progressed from muskets and sailing ships to rifles, machine guns, tanks and battleships.  Many thousands died to ensure our freedoms and the liberties of other nations in the decades to come.  Modern mechanized warfare reached its most widespread application in World War II.  Our youngest surviving veterans of that war are now in their late eighties; a few years ago, around a thousand World War II veterans were dying each day.  Their numbers continue to shrink.  There are only 10 surviving World War II Medal of Honor winners still alive.

Back in 1941, when America entered the War, only Great Britain stood between Western European freedom and the Axis armies.  France had long since capitulated.  Germany and Italy controlled most of Eastern Europe and North Africa.  The Royal Air Force had held off the German Luftwaffe, preventing an invasion of England.  And it was from there that the United States was able to join their former enemies, the British, in fighting back.

England turned into an immobile aircraft carrier, and we covered the southeastern countryside with American air bases.  The English had been combatting Germany with nighttime bombing raids, bombing whole cities in an effort to destroy targets.  The American approach would be to attack in the daytime, using heavy four-engine bombers flying at 30,000 feet, and precision bombsights that would allow hitting specific targets.  These bombers, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-24 Liberator both had a crew of ten men-- a Pilot and Co-pilot, Bombardier and Navigator, Radio Operator, and five other gunners.

The missions flown by these men and planes are scarcely believable today.  In the early days, the groups of planes were small, taking off in the pre-dawn hours.  Climbing over England to five miles high, they would assemble and begin heading over towards targets in France and Germany.  At these altitudes, temperatures were twenty to fifty degrees below zero, and the planes were not heated or pressurized.  Oxygen masks and heated suits were required; removing a glove could result in frostbite.  For a long time, we did not have any fighter aircraft that could accompany these bombers.  They would be subject to attack for hours by enemy fighters.  Once over the target, the enemy fighters would leave and refuel while our bombers had to fly through heavy anti-aircraft fire.  A straight-and-level approach was needed to bomb the target, making the bombers themselves targets for the anti-aircraft attacks.  After leaving the bomb run, the enemy fighters would return, assaulting our planes all the way back to the English Channel.

The losses were astounding.  It was not uncommon for twenty per cent of the bombers to be lost on a single raid.  Many were wounded in those freezing high-altitude aluminum cans, bleeding and dying in the hours before the plane reached home.  There was a near certainty of eventual death.  It has been said that once aerial combat began, the life expectancy of the tail-gunner in a B-17 was a little more than two minutes.  The requirement was that a bomber crew had to complete 25 missions before they could be sent home.  The average number of missions completed was only 12-14 before being shot down, and only twenty per cent of crews were able to survive to complete the required number of missions.  In fact, one of the first to do so, the crew of the "Memphis Belle" became something of celebrities for making it.

Because the chance of survival was so low, the unofficial name for such a policy was, "fly until you die".  Most knew that they would not be coming home.  They climbed into these lumbering, noisy machines for each mission knowing that there was a good chance that it would be their last.  They did it so that our country, and others, would enjoy the freedoms we do today.  Their suffering was not in vain. 

Although the vast majority of us will never have to show such courage, in our own way we, too, must "fly until we die."  As Christians, we deal with the pains of life, knowing that, "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him" (II Timothy 2:12).  Each day that we begin we are not guaranteed to finish, but the difference between us and those brave airmen is that we know that as Christians it is when we die that we go home.  At 30,000 feet, the bomber crews were five miles closer to Heaven, yet when our mission here is over, within an instant of dying we shall join God in peace.  Let us give thanks for these courageous fliers and others that risked their lives for posterity, and as we look at Independence Day give God thanks for our freedoms, the Independence of our Country, and our Dependence on Him.