When His Jet Lost Hydraulics — He Destroyed 4 Enemy Fighters Before Ejecting

Tailless Over Germany: How a Young American Pilot Saved His Crew Against Impossible Odds

On the morning of October 14, 1943, at nearly 28,000 feet above Nazi Germany, a 24-year-old American pilot found himself flying an aircraft that, by every rule of aerodynamics, should not have been able to stay in the air.

First Lieutenant James Robert Callahan was at the controls of a B-17G Flying Fortress nicknamed Pennsylvania Steel, part of a massive U.S. Army Air Forces raid targeting the ball-bearing factories of Schweinfurt. Those factories produced critical components for German tanks, submarines, and fighter aircraft. Destroying them was vital—and deadly. Previous raids had shown the cost clearly: nearly one in four bombers sent to Schweinfurt never returned.

Callahan and his crew knew the statistics. They flew anyway.

By 9:54 a.m., bombs were away. The formation turned for home through black clouds of flak and swarming German fighters. Two minutes later, disaster struck. A German Focke-Wulf FW 190 fired a 21-centimeter air-to-air rocket that detonated against Pennsylvania Steel’s tail. In a single explosion, the entire tail assembly—rudder, elevators, stabilizers, and the tail gunner’s position—was torn from the aircraft.

Technical Sergeant Raymond Peter Romano, the 26-year-old tail gunner, was killed instantly.

Inside the cockpit, Callahan felt the control yoke go dead in his hands. With no tail, the B-17 had no conventional pitch or directional control. In theory, it should have spun out of the sky within seconds.

It didn’t.

Instead, the bomber wallowed forward in a slow, unstable descent. The reason was a fragile combination of luck and quick thinking. The bomb load was gone, shifting the aircraft’s center of gravity. The elevator trim tabs were set just right. And most importantly, Callahan and his flight engineer, Staff Sergeant Eugene Mitchell, realized they could “fly” the crippled bomber using engine power alone.

Throttle became their rudder and elevator.

By advancing power on one side and reducing it on the other, they could yaw the aircraft. By increasing or decreasing all engines together, they could raise or lower the nose. It wasn’t true flight—it was controlled falling—but it worked.

For the next 90 minutes, eight men fought physics, cold, and relentless enemy attacks over the heart of Germany.

German fighters returned again and again, drawn to the wounded bomber falling behind the formation. Without its tail guns, Pennsylvania Steel was dangerously exposed. FW 190s raked the fuselage with 20-millimeter cannon fire, destroying radios, severing fuel lines, and knocking out engines. At one point, hydraulic pressure dropped to zero. Another pass wounded Callahan’s co-pilot, First Lieutenant Marcus Deluchcci, with shrapnel in the shoulder.

Still, the aircraft stayed airborne.

As the bomber limped southward, Callahan faced an impossible choice. England was out of reach. Bailing out meant capture and years in a German prison camp. There was only one slim chance: neutral Switzerland.

Turning south meant flying deeper into enemy territory, over flak-defended cities and within reach of fresh German fighters. Callahan chose Switzerland anyway.

The gamble worked.

As Pennsylvania Steel neared the Swiss border, German fighters broke off pursuit, unwilling to risk violating Swiss neutrality. Moments later, Swiss Air Force fighters intercepted the bomber—not as enemies, but as escorts enforcing international law. The Americans would be forced to land and be interned, but they would live.

The landing itself was nearly as dangerous as the flight.

With hydraulics destroyed, Mitchell manually cranked down the main landing gear—hundreds of exhausting turns. The nose gear remained stuck. At Dubendorf Airfield near Zurich, Callahan brought the tailless, partially blind bomber down at high speed.

The main wheels hit first. Seconds later, the nose slammed into the runway, crushing the forward fuselage in a shower of sparks and aluminum. The aircraft skidded to a stop with less than 1,000 feet of runway remaining.

Against all odds, seven crewmen walked away. Two were injured. One was dead.

Under international law, the surviving crew was interned in Switzerland for the remainder of the war. They lived in relatively humane conditions at an internment camp in the Alps—safe, but not free. They learned of Romano’s burial in a German military cemetery. They waited.

When the war ended in May 1945, they finally came home.

Callahan returned to Pennsylvania, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary heroism. Nerve damage in his left hand ended his flying career. He never flew again.

The others scattered across the country—opening businesses, teaching, fixing engines, raising families. They held reunions every five years. They rarely spoke about the flight. Men who survive such things seldom do.

One by one, they passed away.

Today, Pennsylvania Steel no longer exists, scrapped long ago on a Swiss airfield. But its final flight remains one of the most extraordinary feats of airmanship in World War II: a bomber with no tail, no hydraulics, under constant attack, flown across enemy territory by a young pilot who refused to give up.

James Robert Callahan was 24 years old that day over Schweinfurt. He saved eight lives by refusing to accept what physics, statistics, and war itself said was inevitable.

And because of that decision, their story—and the name of the man who didn’t come home—endures.