James Lee Hutchinson Analysis

Continuing to read about James Lee Hutchinson is increasingly intriguing the more in depth it goes. Reading about his experiences paints a picture in my mind as to what he was experiencing. I know, my imagination can only picture so much from reality. I cannot imagine being in person at such historical events. As Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany this, of course, lead to early air war. At this time, Adolf Hitler’s soldiers and armies had most of the control over Europe. The Battle of Britain was a critical time period when England fought off German air raids. This helped prevent further German invasions. The Box Formation, as James Lee Hutchinson describes it “consisted of three squadrons of bombers flying a ‘sacked’ formation …show more content…
The clouds were thick which caused the bombers to climb to higher altitudes. High altitudes meant slower breathing and harder visibility. As the bombers were flying right into enemy territory the forces sent out high frequency radio messages recalling the bombers. Now, bombers were headed to face the odds. The Memphis Belle was the first B-17 to complete twenty five missions, with all the crew and plane surviving. This is very mind blowing to me, because can you imagine Nazi fighter attacking heavily and your crew and plane make it out alive and in one piece. The crew members were respectively awarded a grand total of sixty medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross. Not only were air crew members important but ground crew members as well. Ground crew members were anything from mechanics to technicians to make sure B-17s were still flying. Ground crew members went through six months of training in their specialty. There job was to keep the B-17s running and making sure they made it through here mission with no maintenance problems. Ground crew members checked anything from tire pressures to repairing the engines. Can you imagine the pressure if anything went wrong mechanically