A B-17 lost its entire nose at 20,000 feet – See how the crew flew using bare, frozen cables

On July 14, 1944, at 9:42 a.m., the laws of aviation ceased to apply to a B-17G Flying Fortress nicknamed Mizpah. First Lieutenant Evald Swanson, just 24 years old, was piloting the bomber through a black curtain of flak over Budapest. They had just released two tons of high explosives when an 88mm German shell struck the aircraft with surgical, lethal precision.

The explosion didn’t just damage the plane; it vaporized the entire front section. The nose compartment, the navigator’s station, the Norden bombsight, and the plexiglass panels simply vanished. In an instant, the two men in the nose—Lieutenant Kenneth Dudley and Lieutenant Joe Henderson—were gone.

Swanson sat in his pilot’s seat staring at the open sky where his instruments should have been. The wind, screaming at 300 mph and -40°C, tore through the cockpit. Blood covered the flight deck. The control column, once mounted to the nose structure, was gone. Most pilots would have accepted the inevitable. Swanson grabbed the raw, exposed steel cables hanging in the wind and refused to let go.

PART I: THE SKELETON IN THE SKY

The Mizpah should have fallen like a stone. With the weight of the nose gone, the center of gravity shifted violently backward. The bomber pitched up into a vertical climb, threatening to stall and spin into the railway yards below.

Swanson had no airspeed indicator, no altimeter, and no horizon. He was flying a 65,000-pound “flying brick” by sheer feel. But he wasn’t alone. Technical Sergeant Frank Gmensi, the flight engineer, crawled forward from his turret. He saw the bundle of steel cables—rudder, elevator, and aileron wires—whipping in the freezing slipstream.

Normally, these cables were hidden behind protective panels. Now, they were the only “reins” left for this mechanical beast. Without a word, Gmensi and two other gunners, Robert Bell and George Simelli, positioned themselves in the bomb bay. They wrapped their gloved hands around the cold steel wires.

PART II: THE CABLE HANDLERS

The coordination was a miracle of non-verbal communication. Swanson, 40 feet forward in a cockpit that was now an open porch, would adjust the throttles to shift the plane’s momentum. The men in the bomb bay would feel the tension in the cables and pull.

• To turn left: They pulled the left rudder cable.

• To climb: They hauled back on the elevator strings.

• To level the wings: They fought the aileron wires that cut into their palms despite their heavy flight gloves.

The situation went from impossible to catastrophic at 9:44 a.m. A second 88mm shell struck Engine Number Two. It exploded in a spray of oil and fire. The Mizpah was now a three-engined skeleton, losing altitude and falling miles behind the safety of the formation. Swanson watched the dark shapes of his group disappear into the summer haze. They were alone over enemy territory.

PART III: THE FAILING TAIL

As they crossed from Hungary into Yugoslavia, a new terror emerged. Staff Sergeant Charles Tucker, the tail gunner, felt the entire rear of the plane begin to flex. The explosion in the nose had sent stress fractures through the long aluminum fuselage. The tail—the very structure keeping the plane stable—was wobbling like a reed in the wind.

If the tail snapped, the plane would enter a “death spiral” so violent that the centrifugal force would pin the men to the floor, making escape impossible.

Swanson made the ultimate captain’s choice. He couldn’t give the order over the damaged intercom, but the crew knew. One by one, seven men clipped their parachutes and jumped through the waist windows into the unknown of Yugoslavia. They would be captured, but they would live.

Finally, only Swanson and his co-pilot, Paul Burnt, remained. Swanson looked at Burnt and nodded toward the back. Burnt unbuckled, crawled through the narrow passage, and jumped at 20,000 feet.

PART IV: THE LONELY DESCENT

Evald Swanson was now the only living soul aboard a piece of falling wreckage. He stayed at the throttles for two more minutes, steering the ghost-plane further southwest to ensure his crew landed far away from the eventually inevitable crash site.

At 10:00 a.m., Swanson unbuckled. The wind pressure immediately tried to suck him out through the missing nose. He fought his way back to the waist, grabbed his parachute, and threw himself into the void at 17,000 feet.

He watched from his harness as the Mizpah finally gave up. At 15,000 feet, the tail section tore off. The forward fuselage pitched vertically and slammed into a forest, erupting in a column of black smoke. Swanson hit the trees minutes later, his left leg snapping cleanly as he crashed through the branches.

EPILOGUE: THE LEGACY OF THE SURVIVORS

Swanson hung in his harness 15 feet above the ground, his leg bent at an unnatural angle, until German soldiers found him. Within three days, all eight survivors of the Mizpah were reunited in a prisoner-of-war camp.

They had done the impossible: they had flown a plane with no nose and no cockpit for ten minutes using bare hands and raw cables.

The Aftermath:

• Evald Swanson: Returned to Michigan, married, and lived to age 89. He rarely spoke of the mission, calling it “a matter of luck.”

• The Honors: Swanson eventually retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. His story is now a mandatory case study in airmanship and “inherent stability” at flight academies.

• The Fallen: Lieutenants Dudley and Henderson are remembered today on a plaque in the 483rd Bomb Group archives.

The Mizpah remains a testament to the fact that when the machine fails, the human spirit becomes the ultimate flight control system.

Note: Some content was generated using AI tools (ChatGPT) and edited by the author for creativity and suitability for historical illustration purposes.