From: (ArtKramr)


Anyone with combat experience is familiar with the pilot goes last tradition.
Once you hear that the pilot suivived but the crew was lost a few hundred
thousand aircrew all get their suspicions aroused. It is the normal natural
response for those with combat experience. Only inexperienced wannabees would
look at it any other way.
Arthur Kramer

This has been an interesting thread,,,,,but........

I can't get one particular piece of footage out of my head. It is the film of
that silver (non painted) B-24 somewhere over Italy (I think, but my memory is
starting to really suck) taking a flak hit right around the number 2 engine
with the almost instant crumpling of the wing right at that engine. The plane
IMMEDIATELY begins its fall as the gas tank ruptures and fire breaks out at the
wing root.

Within 4 or 5 seconds, this aircraft was in a death spiral, probably with
enough G force to pin most of the crew against their compartment walls.

There wasn't a damn thing this pilot could do to "fly" this airplane...he was
merely a passenger soon after the wing separated and control was completely
lost.

I can only imagine that the pilot called a bailout, and after that it was
"every man for himself" because this plane WAS NOT flying anymore. If anybody
got out of it alive, I'd certainly be surprised.

Now, IF the pilot got out and was the only one to survive that incident, I
guess it would seem sort of suspect to the rest of the unit's guys with respect
to the "pilot goes last tradition", but in the actual course of events, "stuff"
happened....and happened really, really fast. I'd say anybody who wasn't out of
that aircraft within ten or fifteen seconds (max) probably died in it.

To second guess the decisions of any person caught in such a circumstance,
wherein life changed in the blink of an eye, could possibly result in a
slanderous injustice to that person......although, when all is considered in a
war zone wherein death, mutilation, and crippling are occurring on an
industrial scale, a slander is the pettiest of an injustice one can suffer.

Just an observation.
Dave