Emmanuel Gustin wrote in message . ..
(WalterM140) wrote in message ...


(snip)

And the serial. number on "TS" was 23211

I suppose that must be 42-3211. I havent't yet found any
information on it.

From The B-17 Flying Fortress Story, Freeman and Osborne,
it has basic histories of all B-17s.

42-3211 delivered Cheyenne 24 March 1943, assigned to 535
squadron 381 bomb group 15 June 1943, collided with Fw190
when returning from strike on Amiens 14 July 1943, crash
landed Manston airfield, written off.

Mighty 8th War Diary entry for 14 July 1943, "381BG collided with
Fw190 but managed to return and crash land Manston airfield,
crew safe." The book records the 381st lost 1 bomber and had
another 2 written off.

So the B-17 stayed in the air long enough to do a landing at
Manston, and was then written off, so survived is being defined
as making it back to crash land, and not fly again.

Head on is being defined as part of the Fw190 hitting part of
the B-17 while travelling in a near opposite direction, it is not
a fuselage to fuselage hit, nor the Fw190 fuselage being what
hit first, and it looks like the Fw190 engine never hit the bomber.

There are examples of mid air collisions in WWII where one of the
aircraft survived, this includes heavy bombers hitting each other,
the usual result of a mid air collision was destruction, but not always.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.