| History Roundtable
Jewellee Jordan Kuenstler will discuss her book, Heavy Date Over Germany: The Life And Times of B-17 Tail Gunner Ray Perry, at the World War II History Roundtable Audie Murphy Chapter meeting in the American Cotton/ Murphy Museum in Greenville. The program will begin at 7 p.m. April 25. The public is invited to attend. Kuenstler was a Perry neighbor and interviewed the veteran, father of former Texas Governor Rick Perry. Kuenstler is director of the Museum of the West Texas Frontier in Stamford, Texas. Sponsor of the program is Greenville Electric Utility System [GEUS].
In World War II more than 12,000 B-17 Flying Fortresses at $3.3 million apiece were built for action. Lost in combat were 4,735 Queen of the Skies. Each had a particular name, and of the 63% that survived missions the second one called Heavy Date, part of the 336th bomb squadron of Jimmy Doolittle’s 95th Bomb Group out of Horham Airfield in England, carried 19 year old Ray Perry from Haskell, Texas. He was the tail gunner, still alive in April 1945 after 37 missions.
The average age of the heavy bomber pilots was only 26 and that was just a couple years older than the average age of the crew of 10. Perry’s pilot was 26. One pilot flew 91 missions! Some went to larger assignments, such as Paul Tibbets of the B-19 Enola Gay. Curtis LeMay became head of the Strategic Air Command. After service, Tom Landry became an NFL coach. Others in B-17 crews who made their careers famous were actors Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart, writers Norman Lear and Gene Roddenberry, and motorsports car designer Smokey Yunick. Many more became leaders of hundreds of communities.
Tail gunners were lost in history’s haze, but Perry saved a mission bomb tag from all assignments. Each Kuenstler chapter discusses the date, the target, and the results completed by the durable machine that ended the war with Germany one month after Perry finally qualified to take a break and return home on leave. A part of the 8th Air Force, his was the only group awarded three Distinguished Unit Citations. The story of Perry’s tail gunner rear view at about 182 miles per hour is fascinating. The Flying Fortresses were in 321 missions before April 20, 1945. They lost 156 of their B-17s with 569 crewmen killed in action. Many times the tail of the craft was shot up or off!
“Lucky to survive” was a normal phrase when the beat up B-17s finally arrived back to base.