WW2 Exhibit – Smithsonian Institute, National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC.
In 1994 a new exhibit was displayed at the National Air and Space Museum. This exhibit was titled “A Wing & A Prayer – Aircraft Survival Despite Heavy Damage”. The exhibit contained photographs of twenty-one heavily damaged US bombers that miraculously returned to safety despite major aircraft damage due to enemy anti-aircraft.
The photo on the right side of the exhibit was taken on 13 Sept 1944. It shows four B-17 airmen standing in a hole created by a German flak shell. The B-17 was damaged while attacking the IG Faben Chemical Plant located at Ludwigshafen. Despite the damage the pilot and crew was able to return to England and land the plane at their air base, the 493rd Bomb Group station (Debach, England).
The same flak explosion that blasted the wing also sent shrapnel through the aircraft and struck T/Sgt Cruz E Nogales inside the radio room. Cruz Nogales suffered a shrapnel wound to the back of his head and was left barely conscious. Right after the B-17 landed, Cruz was transported to the 65th General Hospital in critical condition.
Over the next two to three days Cruz gradually regained consciousness. He began to realize he was in a hospital but did not know how he got there. The doctors gradually reduced the amount of morphine, and he noticed the pain at the back of his head. This pain got worse when he tried to move his legs or arm. He felt a sense of panic that he could be paralyzed, that the injury had affected his nervous system. Fortunately, over many days the swelling subsided, and Cruz made a long and steady recovery. He was in the 65th Hospital for 3 weeks before he returned to combat duty.
The 4 officers standing on the jeep inside the hole in the wing were Lt Roy Murphy, pilot; Lt Norman Tesch, co-pilot; Lt John McComb, navigator; and Lt Donald McKenna, bombardier.
Another photo of the damage shows the internal damage of the wing.
The damaged area was more than 5 feet wide and 2.5 feet deep. Around the hole the wing was mangled with the multiple sections bent upward and the bottom twisted downward. There were fuel and hydraulic lines twisted and bent in different directions! The flak shell must have exploded while it was passing through the wing!
Days later Lt. Don Mckenna, Lt. John McComb, and Lt. Roy Murphy, decided to “hang out” for a while in the damaged wing. It was evident that they were still pondering what had happened to them. “Did we really survive this?”
On 13 October 1944, T/Sgt Cruz E. Nogales was awarded the Purple Heart for “wounds received in action against an enemy of the United States on 13 Sept 1944” by Major Arnold T. Phillips, Operations Officer of the 863rd Bomb Squadron.
50 years later, the staff of the Smithsonian Institute evaluated hundreds of photos to find “badly damaged” WW2 aircraft for a new exhibit titled “A Wing & A Prayer – Aircraft Survival Despite Heavy Damage”. The exhibit contained photographs of twenty-one heavily damaged US bombers that miraculously returned to safety despite major aircraft damage due to enemy anti-aircraft. The most prominent photo of the exhibit was the B-17 Flying Fortress with the “hole in the wing” piloted by the Murphy crew of the 493rd Bomb Group, 863rd Bomb Squadron.
The son of Cruz Nogales, Charles stands in front of the Smithsonian exhibit with daughter Deana and granddaughter Julia in 2012.