The Two Buckys: The Legendary Valor and Unbreakable Bond of Cleven and Egan in the ‘Bloody Hundredth’

They were the Hollywood kings of the cockpit, two best friends with a swagger that masked the sheer terror of flying through a wall of German steel.

Major Gail “Buck” Cleven and Major John “Bucky” Egan weren’t just pilots; they were the heart and soul of the 100th Bombardment Group, famously known as the Bloody Hundredth.

But behind the daring smiles and the sheepskin flight jackets lies a gut-wrenching story of survival and a bond that even a Nazi prisoner of war camp couldn’t break.

Imagine being 25,000 feet in the air, your plane ripped open by 20mm cannons, your navigator bleeding to death, and your pilot screaming to bail out, only for Buck Cleven to grab him by the throat and force him to stay.

This isn’t a movie script; it is the raw, terrifying reality these men lived every single day. When one went down, the other didn’t mourn—he volunteered for the next suicide mission to get revenge.

You won’t believe the shocking details of how these legends survived the unimaginable and what really happened when they finally reunited behind barbed wire. Discover the full, incredible journey of the real Masters of the Air in the comments section below.

In the summer of 1943, the sky over Norfolk, England, was perpetually filled with the low, rhythmic thrum of Wright Cyclone engines. From the runways of Thorpe Abbotts, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 100th Bombardment Group rose to challenge the Third Reich in a brutal campaign of daylight precision bombing.

Among the hundreds of young men who took to the air, two figures stood out with a charisma that seemed plucked straight from a Hollywood backlot: Major Gail “Buck” Cleven and Major John “Bucky” Egan. Known collectively as “the two Buckys,” these squadron commanders epitomized the “debonair style and Hollywood swagger” of the U.S. Army Air Forces, but beneath their sheepskin jackets lay a resolve that would be tested to the absolute breaking point.

The Architect of Resilience: Gail “Buck” Cleven

Gail Cleven’s path to the cockpit began long before the war, earning his wings at Randolph Field, Texas, in 1940. By the time he arrived in England in June 1943 to command the 350th Bomb Squadron, he was already a seasoned instructor and a natural leader. Cleven was a man of few words but immense action. His reputation was cemented during his 11th mission—the legendary Regensburg raid on August 17, 1943.

Seated in the lead plane of the low squadron, Cleven’s B-17 was ravaged by six direct hits from 20mm cannon fire. The nose was shattered, the bombardier was wounded, and the navigator was dying. As the aircraft bucked and groaned under the onslaught, the pilot, Captain Norman Scott, reached for the bailout bell.

In a moment that has since become part of Air Force lore, Cleven overrode him. “You son of a bitch, you sit there and take it!” he barked over the intercom. His refusal to quit steadied the panicked crew. They didn’t just survive; they stayed in formation, dropped their bombs on the target, and managed to fly their “sieve” of an airplane across the Mediterranean to land in North Africa. This was the essence of Cleven: a man who simply would not allow his crew to fail.

The Soul of the Squadron: John “Bucky” Egan

If Cleven was the stoic anchor, John “Bucky” Egan was the group’s electric heart. Commanding the 418th Bomb Squadron, Egan was the quintessential airman—charming, charismatic, and a fixture at the local pubs. Yet, his “devil-may-care” attitude was balanced by a deep, personal devotion to his men.

Unlike many officers who used impersonal form letters for the families of the fallen, Egan insisted on writing to the families of his missing airmen by hand. He believed that the personal touch was the only way to honor the teenagers who were disappearing into the German clouds under his command.

Egan’s bond with Cleven was the defining relationship of his military life. They were more than comrades; they were two sides of the same coin. When Cleven was shot down during a mission to Bremen on October 8, 1943, Egan was on leave in London. Seeing the staggering losses in the morning newspaper, he didn’t wait for his leave to end. He rushed back to Thorpe Abbotts, fueled by a singular, vengeful purpose. “We’re going to get the bastards that got Buck,” he told his fellow airmen.

The Disaster at Munster and the “Bloody Hundredth”

Egan’s quest for vengeance led him to volunteer for the mission to Munster on October 10, 1943. It was a day of reckoning. The German air defenses were at their peak, and the 100th was targeted with a ferocity that bordered on the personal. In the chaotic skies over Germany, Egan’s B-17 was struck in the belly by a flak shell. As the engines died one by one and the cockpit filled with fire, Egan remained calm, overseeing the “administrative end” of abandoning the ship.

One crew member, bombardier “Hambone” Hamilton, was hanging half-out of the plane after his shoulder strap caught on the door handle, with the inboard propeller whirling inches from his head. Miraculously, the crew cleared the wreckage. It was this week of catastrophic losses—where nearly the entire group was wiped out, leaving only one plane to return to base—that earned the unit the somber nickname “The Bloody Hundredth.”

Reunited Behind Barbed Wire

The story of Cleven and Egan could have ended in the smoking wreckage of their respective B-17s, but fate had one more twist in store. Three days after Cleven arrived at the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III, he watched a new group of bedraggled American flyers file through the gates. Spotting a familiar face, Cleven called out with his trademark dry wit: “What took you so long?”

Egan, battered but unbowed, shouted back: “Well, that’s what you get for being sentimental!”

The two friends spent the remainder of the war together, surviving the “Great Escape” crackdown and the grueling “Black March” in the freezing winter of 1945. Cleven eventually seized an opportunity to escape the marching column and made it back to American lines, while Egan was liberated from Stalag VIIA in April 1945.

A Legacy Beyond the Clouds

After the war, both men continued to serve their country. Cleven stayed in the Air Force through Korea and Vietnam, eventually retiring as a full colonel with an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate in physics. He passed away in 2006, remembered as a man of iron will. Egan continued his service as well, attending the National War College before his untimely death in 1961 at the age of 45.

Today, the story of the “two Buckys” has been immortalized in the miniseries Masters of the Air, with Austin Butler and Callum Turner bringing their Hollywood swagger to a new generation. But for those who study the history of the 100th Bomb Group, the real Cleven and Egan remain more than characters. They are symbols of an era where young men faced the impossible, held together by a bond that no war could sever and a courage that defined the very meaning of “The Greatest Generation.”