My father was a bombardier on a Boeing B-17G named "Little John" (ID letters of "JUX" and "UXJ" painted on the fuselage) based at RAF Podington (airfield), England (Eighth Air Force, 92nd Bombardment Group, 327th Squadron). Type "Podington" (and/or "Doc Furniss War Film") in the YouTube search tray if interested in seeing a typical WW2 bomber airfield in action.
He flew 20 mostly hellish combat missions over Europe. On his last mission, his bomber was badly crippled by German fighters (FW-190s) and flak over eastern Germany (they were bombing an FW-190 fighter aircraft factory).
The pilot (Lt Trost) radioed home base that the aircraft was badly damaged and that he was going to attempt to limp to and crash land in Sweden. As they flew over the Baltic Sea the crew threw out everything they could to lighten the load as the B-17 was slowly losing altitude (the plane was down to one good engine and another engine crippled but putting out partial power; the other two engines were dead). As they neared Sweden, Swedish fighter planes intercepted them and escorted them to Bultofta airbase where Lt Trost managed to perform a successful wheels-up crash landing (as the aircraft's hydraulics were completely shot out by the fighters).
My father and his crewmates were interred (they were de facto prisoners of war) of Sweden for the rest of the conflict. On one side of the airbase was the barracks for American and British POW aircrew and on the other side, there were barracks for German aircrew POWs. The two sides were not allowed to comingle. My father was employed by the Swedish government as an aircraft mechanic (prior to volunteering for air combat he was fully trained as a B-24 bomber mechanic having received almost a years training at the bomber plant at Ypsilanti, Michigan).
Believe me, there is a LOT more to this story, loads of fascinating details and whatnot I gleaned from my dad (and not covered in the excellent book mentioned below).
If interested, you can read about this and much more in a fascinating book (available from Amazon.com) by George Webster (Ph.D. Biochemistry), the aircraft's radio operator and rear dorsal gunner. It is a fairly easy and quick read, and likely you will not be able to put it down (Click on the book's front cover to read the Preface):
Savage Sky: Life and Death on a Bomber over Germany in 1944 (Stackpole Military History Series)
Feb 11, 2016
by
George Webster