“The Bloody 100th”: On October 10th, 1943, thirteen B-17’s took off and assembled into formation, but only one would return

It was a cold morning on October 10, 1943, the kind that seemed to soak into a man’s bones before the engines even started. At briefing, the crews of the 100th Bomb Group gathered with the usual tension already in the room, but what they heard that morning made the mood even heavier.

The target was Münster.

That alone was enough to tell them it would be ugly. But this mission carried an extra sting. The aiming point was not just another rail yard or factory on the edge of the city. The old town cathedral was part of the target area, and that sent a wave of unease through some of the men. Others reacted very differently. Too many had already lost close friends on earlier missions, and grief has a way of hardening people. Some saw it as revenge. Others just looked down and said nothing.

Among the crews heading out that day was a young pilot named Lieutenant Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal. His co-pilot was Winifred “Pappy” Lewis, and Ronald Bailey served as navigator. Their B-17, Royal Flush, would take its place where no crew wanted to be — all the way at the back of the formation.

That position had a name every bomber man understood.

Tail-end Charlie.

A Mission That Already Felt Wrong

The 100th was part of a much larger force that morning, hundreds of bombers pushing toward Germany. Intelligence warned of massive fighter opposition and heavy flak over the target. Even with all those aircraft in the sky, every crew knew the same ugly truth: numbers only helped so much once the enemy started cutting into the formation.

Still, engines roared to life, one by one, and the Flying Fortresses lifted into the air.

Royal Flush settled into the rear position, exposed and vulnerable from the very start. Nobody on board needed to be reminded what that meant. The plane at the back was often the easiest for German fighters to isolate, and once a bomber lost the cover of the group, things could go bad with brutal speed.

As the formation crossed Holland and pushed deeper into Germany, there was at least one piece of expected good news. Fighter escort was supposed to join them and protect the bombers on the run in.

But that protection never came.

The Fighters Never Showed

At first, the crews kept looking, expecting the escorts to appear at any moment. They scanned the horizon and searched the sky off their wingtips. Nothing.

No friendlies.

No cover.

The weather at the fighter bases had prevented the escorts from taking off, though the bomber crews did not know that at the time. What they did know was simpler and far worse. They were alone over enemy territory, and there was no turning back.

The deeper they flew, the more reports came in from ahead. Enemy fighters were already attacking other elements of the bomber stream. B-17s were being picked off. The pressure kept building, and then the clouds of German interceptors finally appeared in force.

The attack came fast.

Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs slashed through the formation in waves, their cannon fire tearing into the big bombers. Then the twin-engine fighters came in from the rear, launching rockets into the box. The sky turned into a spinning mess of tracers, flak bursts, and aircraft trying to stay alive.

The B-17s fought back with everything they had, but there was only so much even a Flying Fortress could absorb.

The Formation Starts To Break Apart

Then the mission truly began to unravel.

A rocket hit the lead B-17 of the 100th, Mademoiselle Zig-Zag, flown by Major John Egan. The strike wrecked two engines and opened up the fuselage. Egan’s aircraft started to lose speed and drop away, and that created the kind of chain reaction every formation feared.

The bombers directly behind him slowed to hold position. The ones behind them did the same. Soon the spacing began to widen, and confusion spread through the group.

Crews were suddenly faced with an awful choice.

Do they stay with the smaller, faltering section of their own group, or do they push throttles forward and try to race back into the protection of the larger formation ahead?

A couple of crews made the dash.

Most did not.

Royal Flush stayed put, caught in the confusion and unwilling to gamble on crossing open sky alone. It was the kind of decision that made sense in the moment, but it left Rosenthal’s crew trapped inside a shrinking, increasingly isolated group of bombers that the Germans immediately recognized as weak prey.

The enemy pounced.

One Bomber After Another Went Down

The isolated B-17s began to fall apart under the constant attacks.

One bomber was hit on the wing and exploded into a huge fireball, giving its crew only moments to bail out. Another caught fire after repeated cannon strikes. Another tried to break away and head home on its own, only to draw the full attention of the fighters circling nearby. It was chewed to pieces.

Meanwhile, Major Egan’s crippled lead aircraft was taking punishment of its own. The attacks kept coming until it became clear the bomber could not stay in the air much longer. Critical systems were failing one after another, and Egan finally gave the order to bail out.

One by one, the crew jumped.

At the last moment, Egan and his co-pilot stayed behind long enough to help the others escape before making their own exits through the bomb bay. Even then, enemy fire followed them right up to the jump.

Back in Royal Flush, Rosenthal and Lewis stayed in line as long as they could, resisting the urge to bolt for safety. The gunners fought continuously while the crew watched their own group being chewed apart around them.

Then Royal Flush took a direct hit of its own.

A fighter launched rockets, and one slammed into the wing, tearing a huge hole and instantly knocking out two engines. Suddenly the bomber was limping toward Münster with half its power gone and the target still ahead.

Münster Became A Killing Ground

By the time the surviving bombers reached the city, the fighter attacks had given way to something just as deadly.

Flak.

With most of the formation already destroyed or scattered, the guns below could focus on the few aircraft still coming in. That made the final run even more punishing. One of the remaining B-17s was hit, caught fire, and had to drop its bombs early before the crew bailed out. Another was struck and disintegrated.

That left Royal Flush alone.

It is hard to overstate how grim that moment must have felt. One bomber, heavily damaged, down two engines, over the target, with every gun in the city seemingly pointed its way.

Still, the crew stayed with the mission.

The bombardier took control for the bomb run. The target approached painfully slowly. Bomb bay doors opened. Then, at last, the bombs were released.

Mission complete, at least on paper.

Now came the harder part.

Getting home.

Alone In The Sky

Rosenthal took the plane back as soon as the bombs were away and began trying to dodge the flak as Royal Flush escaped the target area. The bomber was hurt badly, but it was still flying.

Then more German fighters appeared.

At that point, normal bomber doctrine started to matter less than survival. Rosenthal began throwing the crippled B-17 into evasive maneuvers that bomber pilots usually tried to avoid. The waist gunners were slammed around inside the aircraft while trying to keep firing as the bomber banked and twisted.

The Germans kept coming.

Then Sergeant Bill DeBlasio, firing from the rear, started turning the fight. He hit one fighter so hard that its wing came off, and the wreck crashed into another attacker. He damaged another plane badly enough to force it away. When a fresh group lined up behind the bomber, DeBlasio kept firing, scoring more hits, even as rockets and machine-gun rounds tore through the aircraft around him.

At one point, two of the attacking fighters lost control and crashed into one another.

That bought Royal Flush something precious – a few more minutes.

Eventually the remaining fighters broke off, likely low on fuel. The sky went quiet, and the crew was left in the eerie calm that follows total chaos.

Royal Flush was still flying.

Barely.

Desperate Measures On The Way Home

The damage inside the bomber was severe. Two waist gunners had been hit by shrapnel and lay wounded on the floor. The crew scrambled to help them while the pilots tried to keep the aircraft in the air.

But the plane was still losing altitude.

So the order came down to throw out everything that was not absolutely necessary.

The crew began stripping the bomber. Guns, ammunition, oxygen tanks, gear — anything that could be tossed overboard went out. It was a desperate act, the kind a crew makes when there are no clean options left. Either the airplane got lighter, or it was not getting home.

No one could be sure it would be enough.

Back at Thorpe Abbotts, the home field of the 100th, men on the ground waited and watched. The time for the bombers to return had already passed. Other groups had landed. But nothing had been heard from the 100th.

Then someone saw it.

A single B-17 appeared low on the horizon.

The Only One To Return

It came in smoking, scarred, and barely holding together.

Royal Flush lowered its gear, drifted toward the runway, and landed. The men waiting on the ground watched in stunned silence as the battered aircraft rolled out and finally stopped.

That was it.

That was the only one.

Of the thirteen B-17s from the 100th Bomb Group that had taken off for Münster that day, only Royal Flush came home. The crew climbed out onto the grass, not in triumph, but in shock. There was no real celebration to speak of. Relief was there, surely, but it was buried under the weight of what had just happened.

The raid was one of the worst disasters suffered by the Eighth Air Force, and the 100th took the worst of it.

That mission helped cement the nickname that would follow the group through history: the Bloody Hundredth.

Out of the crews in the bombers that were lost, 37 men were killed and 93 became prisoners of war. Those numbers alone tell part of the story, but not all of it. What really gave the name its force was the sheer cruelty of that day – the missing escorts, the shattered formation, the bombers falling one after another, and one crippled B-17 somehow refusing to die.

That is why the memory of October 10, 1943, still carries so much weight.

Not because one bomber returned.

But because so many did not.