Before Alling’s disoriented gunners could swing their heavy weapons around fast enough to track it, another jet made a swift pass from eight o’clock and claimed a fifth Fortress. This was Dead Man’s Hand, piloted by Lt. Robert F. Glazener and flying, as many bombers did at the end of the war, without its usual complement of two waist gunners. The aircraft, on its 111th combat mission for the 447th Bomb Group, was the last Eighth Air Force heavy bomber lost to enemy fighters in the war. Alling and his men saw no parachutes, but learned later that seven of the eight crewmen managed to escape the
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