May 1st, 1943. Somewhere over the English Channel. A B17 flying fortress is on fire. Flames are ripping through the fuselage. The radio compartment is an inferno. Ammunition is cooking off, exploding in all directions. Three crewmen have already bailed out. Two others are bleeding out from their wounds.

 And the only man left standing is a 5’6 staff sergeant that nobody wanted to fly with. His name is Maynard Smith. His nickname is Snuffy. He’s been in England for 6 weeks, and this is his first combat mission. He has 90 minutes to save this aircraft, and everyone’s still on it. The pilots can’t help him. They’re trapped in the cockpit, cut off by a wall of fire.

 The gunners can’t help him. They’re either wounded, dead, or floating somewhere in the channel. It’s just Snuffy alone in a burning airplane. 20,000 ft above the ocean and German fighters are still shooting at him. What happens next will make Maynard Smith the first enlisted airman in history to receive the Medal of Honor.

 But here’s the thing about Snuffy Smith. When the Secretary of War flew to England to personally present him with that medal, they couldn’t find him. He was in the kitchen peeling potatoes. Punishment for showing up late to a briefing. This is the story of the hero. Nobody liked Maynard Harrison Smith was born on May 19th, 1911 in Caro, Michigan.

 His father was a successful attorney. His mother was a school teacher. By smalltown Michigan standards, the Smiths were wealthy and Maynard knew it. From an early age, he developed a reputation as a spoiled, entitled troublemaker. The kind of kid who believed rules applied to everyone except him. His parents tried to fix him.

 They sent him to how military academy in Indiana, a boarding school designed to instill discipline in difficult boys. It didn’t work. Maynard graduated, but his personality remained unchanged. He bounced between jobs, the US Treasury Department, the Michigan Banking Commission. Nothing stuck. In 1929, he got married.

 By 1932, he was divorced. Then his father died in 1934 and Maynard Smith made a decision that defined the next several years of his life. He quit his job and lived off his inheritance. No work, no responsibility, just a 30-something man coasting on his dead father’s money, convinced he was smarter than everyone around him.

Eventually, the money started running out. And then came the court case. By 1942, Maynard Smith had a problem. He’d failed to pay child support. The court wasn’t happy. A judge looked at this 31-year-old man, unemployed, arrogant, and completely unwilling to meet his obligations and made him an offer, jail, or the military.

 Maynard chose the military. He enlisted in the US Army Air Forces on August 31st, 1942. Not because he wanted to serve his country, not because he felt called to fight the Nazis, because it was better than prison. But here’s the thing about the Army Air Forces. They needed aerial gunners. The bombing campaign over Europe was chewing through air crews at a horrific rate.

 And aerial gunners, the men who man the machine guns on B7 bombers, had one of the most dangerous jobs in the entire war. They also got automatic promotions to non-commissioned officer rank. Better pay, better status. Maynard Smith volunteered for aerial gunnery school, not for glory, for the paycheck. After completing gunnery school, Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith was shipped to England and assigned to the 423rd Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bomb Group, based at RAF Thurley in Bedfordshire.

 His reputation preceded him. Within days of arriving, Smith had managed to alienate almost everyone on the base. He was obnoxious, insubordinate, convinced of his own superiority despite having zero combat experience. He was 5’6 and 130 lb, small, gay-haired at 32, redeyed, flat-footed, and absolutely insufferable.

 The other airmen started calling him Snuffy after Snuffy Smith, a character from a popular comic strip called Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. The comic character was shiftless, badteered, and had no ambition other than to live life on his own terms. The nickname fit perfectly. Here’s how bad it was. In the Eighth Air Force, replacement gunners were usually assigned to crews within days of arriving.

 Combat losses were so high that experienced crews were constantly looking for new men. Nobody wanted Snuffy Smith. For 6 weeks, he sat at Thoroughly while other airmen flew mission after mission. Cruz would rather fly short-handed than take him along. But war doesn’t care about popularity. Eventually, someone had to fly with him. On the last day of April, the mission board went up.

 Target the German submarine pens at St. Nazair, France. St. Nazair was one of the most heavily defended targets in occupied Europe. The Yubot pens there were built from reinforced concrete virtually impervious to bombing. American air crews called it Flax City because of the sheer volume of anti-aircraft fire they encountered over the target.

 Staff Sergeant Maynard Smithwas assigned to fly as ball turret gunner on B7F. The pilot was First Lieutenant Lewis P. Johnson. This was Johnson’s 25th and final mission, the last flight of his combat tour. After this, he was going home. The rest of the crew were also veterans. They knew what they were doing. Smith was the only rookie. At 0300 hours on May 1st, the crews were awakened for the morning briefing.

Despite overcast skies and drizzle, the mission was a go. 78 B17 flying fortresses would cross the English Channel, bomb the submarine pens, and return home. At least that was the plan. The Sperry Ball turret was the most claustrophobic position on a B7. It was a glass and metal sphere mounted on the belly of the aircraft.

 The gunner sat inside with his knees pulled up to his chest, rotating the turret to aim two 50 caliber machine guns at attacking fighters. The view was spectacular. You could see everything beneath the aircraft. The experience was terrifying. You were completely exposed, hanging in space with nothing but thin plexiglass between you and 20,000 ft of empty air.

Most ball turret gunners were chosen for their small size. At 5’6 and 130 lb, Snuffy Smith fit the profile perfectly. He climbed into the turret as Lieutenant Johnson’s B17 lifted off from Thorly and headed south toward France. The mission to Saint Nazair went smoothly. The formation encountered minimal resistance over the target.

 They dropped their bombs and turned for home. 2 hours later, they were approaching what they believed was the southern coast of England. They were wrong. The lead navigator made a catastrophic mistake. In the heavy cloud cover, he misidentified the coastline below. He thought they were over England. They were still over France.

 Specifically, they were over Breast, another heavily fortified German position on the northwestern tip of the Breton Peninsula. The formation descended to 2,000 ft. Thinking they were almost home, that’s when the flack opened up. German anti-aircraft batteries hammered the American bombers. Fighters scrambled to intercept.

 Within minutes, the formation was fighting for its life. Lieutenant Johnson’s B17 took the worst of it. 20 mm cannon shells ripped through the fuselage. The fuel tanks were punctured. A massive fire erupted in the radio compartment and quickly spread to the waist section. The aircraft’s oxygen system was destroyed. Vital control cables were severed.

 In the ball turret, Snuffy Smith’s position lost power. The turret wouldn’t rotate. He was trapped in a useless glass bubble underneath a burning airplane. He had to get out. Smith cranked open the ball turret hatch and pulled himself up into the fuselage. What he saw was chaos. Fire everywhere.

 Smoke so thick he could barely see. The radio compartment was an inferno. The waist section was burning. Three crewmen, technical sergeant Henry Bean, Staff Sergeant Robert Foliard, and Staff Sergeant Joseph Bukachek, made a decision. They bailed out. They jumped into the English Channel hoping to be rescued. They were never seen again.

 The tail gunner, Sergeant Roy Gibson, was badly wounded. He couldn’t move. Up front, Lieutenant Johnson and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Robert Macallum, were trapped in the cockpit. The fire had cut them off from the rest of the aircraft. They couldn’t communicate with anyone behind them. They didn’t even know who was still alive.

 In the middle section of the B7, surrounded by fire and smoke and exploding ammunition, stood one man, Maynard Snuffy Smith, the soldier nobody wanted. What Snuffy Smith did over the next 90 minutes is almost impossible to believe. He didn’t panic. He didn’t bail out. He didn’t freeze. He went to work.

 First, he checked on the wounded tail gunner. Gibson was bleeding badly. Smith administered first aid bandaging wounds, stopping bleeding, doing whatever he could to keep the man alive. Then he turned his attention to the fire. The flames were spreading toward the fuel tanks. If they reached them, the entire aircraft would explode.

Smith grabbed a fire extinguisher and attacked the blaze. When that extinguisher ran empty, he found another one. When that one ran out, he started looking for anything else that might work. Then the German fighters arrived. FW190s spotted the crippled B17, and moved in for the kill. Smith was the only crewman capable of fighting back.

He ran to the left waist gun, a 50 caliber Browning machine gun, mounted in an open window, and opened fire on the attacking fighters. Then he ran to the right waist gun and fired from that position. Then he ran back to fight the fire. Then back to the guns. For 90 minutes, Maynard Smith fought a three-front war.

 Flames on one side, German fighters on the other, and a wounded crewman who needed constant attention. The heat inside the fuselage became unbearable. The spare ammunition started cooking off, rounds exploding randomly, shrapnel flying everywhere. Smith grabbed the exploding ammunition boxes and threw them out through holesthat the fire had burned in the fuselage.

Anything that wasn’t bolted down went overboard. Every pound he threw out made the aircraft lighter, easier to fly, more likely to make it home. When the fire extinguishers were empty, Smith wrapped himself in protective clothing and attacked the flames with his bare hands.

 He beat at the fire with whatever he could find. clothing, blankets, anything. And when nothing else worked, he urinated on the flames, whatever it took. Lieutenant Johnson didn’t know what was happening behind him. He just knew his aircraft was still flying. Somehow, despite the damage, despite the fire, the B7 was still airborne. He nursed the crippled bomber across the English Channel.

 Every minute felt like an hour. The controls were sluggish. Cables had been severed. Hydraulics were failing. But the aircraft kept flying. Finally, they crossed the English coastline. Johnson spotted an airfield Prainac on the southwestern tip of Cornwall and lined up for an emergency landing. The B17 touched down and then it broke in half.

 The fuselage, weakened by fire and riddled with holes, simply gave way. The aircraft split into two pieces on the runway. When rescue crews reached the wreckage, they found Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith standing in the debris. He was exhausted, covered in soot and burns, but alive. So was the tail gunner he’d been treating for 90 minutes.

 So were the pilots who’d been trapped in the cockpit. The B17 had over 3500 bullet holes and shrapnel impacts. It would never fly again. Lieutenant Johnson, the pilot, was direct in his assessment. Maynard Smith was solely responsible for the return of the aircraft and lives of everyone aboard. The story of Snuffy Smith spread quickly.

 Here was a first mission gunner, a man nobody wanted to fly with, who had single-handedly saved a burning aircraft and its crew while fighting off German fighters for an hour and a half. The Army Air Forces saw a propaganda opportunity. America needed heroes, and Snuffy Smith’s story was perfect. An ordinary man rising to extraordinary courage when it mattered most.

 On July 15th, 1943, Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson flew to England to personally present the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Maynard Harrison Smith. It would be the first Medal of Honor awarded to an enlisted airman, the first awarded to a living recipient in the European theater. A ceremony was arranged at Thorly. Press was invited.

 Cameras were ready. There was just one problem. They couldn’t find Snuffy Smith. A frantic search began. Officers checked his barracks, the messaul, the flight line. Nobody had seen him. Finally, someone thought to check the kitchen. There he was. Staff Sergeant Maynard Harrison Smith, Medal of Honor recipient, standing over a pile of potatoes with a peeler in his hand. KP duty.

 Kitchen patrol. the classic military punishment. Smith had been late returning from a pass. His commanding officer had assigned him to potato duty as punishment. He’d completely forgotten about the metal ceremony. That was Snuffy Smith in a nutshell. He’d just performed one of the most heroic acts in the history of aerial combat.

 And two months later, he was still getting in trouble for the same petty infractions that had defined his entire military career. They pulled him out of the kitchen, cleaned him up, and rushed him to the ceremony. Secretary Stimson hung the Medal of Honor around his neck, and Maynard Smith became a legend.

 The press loved the story. Andy Rooney, yes, that Andy Rooney, who would later become famous on 60 Minutes, was a young reporter for Stars and Stripes at the time. He wrote a front page story about Snuffy Smith’s heroism. The Office of War Information turned Smith into a symbol of American courage. He was interviewed, photographed, celebrated.

Back at Thurley, the reality was more complicated. Smith flew four more combat missions after receiving the Medal of Honor, but the stress had taken its toll. He was diagnosed with what they called operational exhaustion, what we would now recognize as combat stress, or PTSD. That’s the story of Maynard Snuffy Smith, the hero nobody liked.

 He was permanently grounded and then his behavior problems resumed. Smith started signing his letters, Sergeant Maynard Smith, CH, putting the initials of his medal after his name like British officers did with their decorations. He used his hero status to skip duties, sleep late, and avoid work. He wore out his welcome quickly. Sergeant.

 On December 17th, 1944, Maynard Smith was reduced in rank from staff sergeant to private for poor job performance. A Medal of Honor recipient, demoted, that almost never happens. Smith was sent home in February 1945 and discharged in May. Despite everything, the demotion, the disciplinary problems, the difficult personality, he received a hero’s welcome when he returned to his hometown.

 There was a parade, speeches, celebrations. America wanted heroes, and Snuffy Smith was one. His post-war life wasturbulent. He had legal troubles, business failures. Another marriage, this time to a British woman named Mary Rener, a USO volunteer. he’d met in England. They had four children together. Smith worked for the Treasury Department again.

 He founded a magazine called Police Officers Journal. He bounced from one venture to another. He never quite found his footing in civilian life, but he never denied what he’d done on May 1st, 1943. If anything, he embraced it, sometimes embellishing the story over the years, adding details that may or may not have been accurate.

That was Snuffy. Until the end, he remained exactly who he’d always been. Let’s put Snuffy Smith’s actions in perspective. For 90 minutes, he fought a fuel-fed fire that threatened to destroy the aircraft, administered first aid to a critically wounded crewman, manned both waste guns to fight off attacking German fighters, threw exploding ammunition out of the burning fuselage, stripped away burning debris to prevent the fire from spreading, extinguished the flames using fire extinguishers, clothing, blankets, and when nothing

else worked, his own urine. He did all of this on his first combat mission with no experience while three of his crew mates were bailing out and two others were too wounded to help. The B7 had over 3,500 holes in it when it landed. It broke in half on the runway and everyone still aboard survived. Snuffy Smith was the first enlisted airman to receive the Medal of Honor.

 Only four others would receive it during the entire war. Maynard Snuffy Smith died on May 11th, 1984 in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was 72 years old. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the same place where presidents and generals rest. His story is complicated. He wasn’t a noble hero from Central Casting.

 He was difficult, arrogant, often his own worst enemy. But on May 1st, 1943, when his aircraft was on fire and his crew mates were dying and German fighters were trying to finish them off, Maynard Smith became something more than the sum of his flaws. He became exactly what was needed at exactly the right moment. That’s the thing about heroism.

It doesn’t care about your personality. It doesn’t care if people like you. It doesn’t care about your past mistakes or your character flaws. It only cares about what you do when everything is falling apart. For 90 minutes over the English Channel, Snuffy Smith fought fire, fought Germans, and fought to keep his crew mates alive.

 The soldier nobody wanted to fly with saved everyone who flew with him. And when the Secretary of War came to give him the highest honor his country could bestow, he was in the kitchen peeling potatoes. That’s the story of Maynard Snuffy Smith, the hero nobody liked.