- 2 days ago
Why one "troublemaker" airman fought a B-17 fire barehanded for 90 minutes during WW2 — on his very first combat mission. This World War 2 story reveals how the most unpopular soldier in the 306th Bomb Group faced an impossible choice over occupied France.
May 1, 1943. Staff Sergeant Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, a ball turret gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, climbed out of his turret into a fuselage engulfed in flames over Brest, France. Three crewmen had already bailed out. The tail gunner was wounded and trapped. Fifteen Focke-Wulf fighters circled for the kill. Every instinct said to jump. Every training manual said a burning bomber at 2,000 feet was a death sentence. His own squadron called him the worst airman they had ever seen.
They were all wrong.
What Smith did over the next 90 minutes defied everything the Army Air Forces believed possible. He fought the fire with blankets, canvas, a fire extinguisher — and his bare hands. He threw burning ammunition boxes out the waist windows while his skin blistered. He manned the guns between firefighting runs as German fighters kept attacking. The English coast was still miles away.
This is the story of the man nobody wanted to f
May 1, 1943. Staff Sergeant Maynard "Snuffy" Smith, a ball turret gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, climbed out of his turret into a fuselage engulfed in flames over Brest, France. Three crewmen had already bailed out. The tail gunner was wounded and trapped. Fifteen Focke-Wulf fighters circled for the kill. Every instinct said to jump. Every training manual said a burning bomber at 2,000 feet was a death sentence. His own squadron called him the worst airman they had ever seen.
They were all wrong.
What Smith did over the next 90 minutes defied everything the Army Air Forces believed possible. He fought the fire with blankets, canvas, a fire extinguisher — and his bare hands. He threw burning ammunition boxes out the waist windows while his skin blistered. He manned the guns between firefighting runs as German fighters kept attacking. The English coast was still miles away.
This is the story of the man nobody wanted to f
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LearningTranscript
00:00At 11.42 on the morning of May 1st, 1943, Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith cranked open the armored hatch of
00:07his ball turret and climbed into a B-17 fuselage that was already on fire.
00:1231 years old, zero combat missions, six weeks of being told he was the worst airman in the entire squadron.
00:19Fifteen Folk Wolf 190 fighters had found them over Brest, France, and they were methodically destroying every bomber in the
00:26formation.
00:26This was the spring of 1943, and the 8th Air Force was learning a brutal lesson over occupied Europe.
00:32The average B-17 crew had a 50% chance of surviving their 25-mission tour.
00:38Some bomb groups were losing that many in a single month.
00:41The submarine pens at Saint-Nazaire had earned a nickname among American air crews.
00:45They called it Flak City.
00:47On this particular mission, 78 flying fortresses had taken off from England that morning.
00:53Only 29 would drop their bombs on target.
00:557 would never come home.
00:5875 young Americans would be listed as killed or missing before sunset.
01:02Staff Sergeant Smith was supposed to be one of those statistics.
01:05Everyone at Thurlay Airfield expected it.
01:07Not because the mission was dangerous.
01:09Every mission was dangerous.
01:11They expected it because Maynard Smith was, by universal agreement, the most useless soldier in the 306th bomb group.
01:19The nickname came first.
01:20Snuffy.
01:21Like the lazy, scheming hillbilly from the comic strips, it fit perfectly.
01:26Smith was 31 in an army of 20-year-olds.
01:29He resented taking orders from men a decade younger than himself.
01:32He had joined the Army Air Forces for one reason only.
01:35A judge in Michigan had given him a choice.
01:38Jail for unpaid child support or military service.
01:41Smith chose the uniform, but he never chose to be a soldier.
01:45At Thurlay, he became legendary for all the wrong reasons.
01:49He slept through briefings.
01:50He argued with officers.
01:52He lectured other airmen on philosophy and politics until they walked away.
01:56His personnel file grew thick with disciplinary actions.
02:00The men of the 423rd Bombardment Squadron had a simple policy regarding Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith.
02:06Nobody wanted to fly with him.
02:09For six weeks, Smith sat on the ground while other crews flew mission after mission.
02:14Pilots specifically requested that he not be assigned to their aircraft.
02:18When a crew needed a replacement ball turret gunner, they asked for anyone else.
02:23The ball turret was the most claustrophobic position on the B-17.
02:27A plexiglass and steel sphere hanging beneath the fuselage,
02:31barely large enough for a small man to curl into a fetal position.
02:35Two .50 caliber machine guns, a computing gun sight,
02:39and nothing between the gunner and 30,000 feet of empty air except a few inches of aluminum and glass.
02:47Smith was short, 5 feet 4 inches.
02:50Physically, he was perfect for the position.
02:52In every other way, he was considered a liability.
02:56The men who had to trust their lives to their crewmates did not trust Maynard Smith.
03:01On the morning of May 1st, that changed.
03:04A crew was short one gunner.
03:06There were no other replacements available.
03:09For the first time in six weeks, Staff Sergeant Smith climbed into a B-17.
03:14The aircraft was piloted by Captain Lewis Johnson,
03:17a veteran completing his 25th and final mission.
03:21After today, Johnson was going home.
03:24He had survived the most dangerous assignment in the American military.
03:28One more mission stood between him and the safety of the United States.
03:33Smith had no idea what combat looked like.
03:36He had trained on fixed targets.
03:38He had memorized procedures.
03:40But he had never seen a German fighter diving at him with cannons blazing.
03:45He had never watched a B-17 explode in midair.
03:48He had never smelled burning flesh at 25,000 feet.
03:53He was about to learn all of it in a single afternoon.
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04:05Back to Smith.
04:07The formation crossed the French coast on the return flight.
04:10The navigator made a fatal error.
04:12He mistook the Brittany Peninsula for the southern coast of England.
04:16Captain Johnson began descending through the clouds, believing they were almost home.
04:20They broke through the cloud cover at 2,000 feet.
04:23Directly below them was the heavily fortified city of Brest.
04:27The anti-aircraft guns opened fire immediately.
04:31Then the fighters came.
04:33Focke-Wulf 190s.
04:3415 to 20 of them.
04:36The B-17 shuddered as cannon shells ripped through the fuselage.
04:40The left-wing fuel tank ruptured.
04:43Aviation gasoline poured into the radio compartment and ignited.
04:46The oxygen system exploded.
04:48And Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith, the airman nobody wanted, found himself staring at a choice
04:54that would define the rest of his life.
04:57Three crewmen were already gone.
04:58They had jumped from the burning aircraft, preferring the uncertainty of a parachute over
05:03the certainty of fire.
05:04The tail gunner was wounded and trapped.
05:07The waste was an inferno.
05:09Every instinct said to follow the others out the door.
05:12Smith looked at the flames.
05:13He looked at the emergency exit.
05:16Then he started moving toward the fire.
05:20The interior of a B-17 waste section measured roughly 14 feet long and 6 feet wide.
05:26In normal conditions, it was cramped but functional.
05:29Two waste gunners stood at open windows on either side, manning .50 caliber machine guns
05:34on flexible mounts.
05:35The radio compartment sat forward.
05:38The tail section extended aft.
05:40A narrow crawlway connected the waste to the ball turret below.
05:43None of those conditions were normal anymore.
05:46Aviation gasoline burns at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:50When the fuel tank ruptured above the radio compartment, the liquid sprayed across equipment,
05:55ammunition boxes, and the thin aluminum skin of the aircraft.
05:59The fire spread in seconds.
06:01Flames climbed the walls.
06:02Smoke filled the confined space with toxic fumes.
06:05The temperature inside the waste section began rising toward levels that would melt human skin
06:10on contact.
06:11Smith had no firefighting equipment.
06:13The B-17 carried small extinguishers, but they were designed for electrical fires, not
06:18burning aviation fuel.
06:20The standard procedure for an uncontrollable aircraft fire was simple.
06:24Get out.
06:24Every airman knew the mathematics of survival.
06:27A burning bomber at 2,000 feet gave a crew perhaps 90 seconds to evacuate before structural
06:33failure.
06:33Parachutes worked.
06:35Staying aboard a burning aircraft did not.
06:37Three men had already made that calculation.
06:40The radio operator, Technical Sergeant Henry Bean, Waste Gunner Staff Sergeant Robert Folliard,
06:46Waste Gunner Staff Sergeant Joseph Bukacek.
06:48They had gone out the door into the sky over occupied France.
06:52Their parachutes opened.
06:53German soldiers watched them descend.
06:56None of the three would survive the day.
06:58Smith did not know their fate.
06:59He only knew that the fire was spreading and the tail gunner was still aboard.
07:03Sergeant Roy Gibson had taken shrapnel wounds during the initial fighter attack.
07:07He was trapped in the tail section, unable to move forward through the flames.
07:11If the fire reached the tail, Gibson would burn alive.
07:15If the fire reached the oxygen tanks, the entire aircraft would explode.
07:19If the fire weakened the fuselage structure, the B-17 would break apart in flight.
07:25Smith grabbed the first thing he could find, a blanket.
07:28He beat at the flames with it until the blanket caught fire and he had to throw it away.
07:33He found a piece of canvas and tried again.
07:35Same result.
07:37The gasoline-fed fire was too hot, too fast, spreading across too wide an area.
07:42The ammunition began cooking off.
07:45.50 caliber rounds stacked in metal boxes along the waste section walls.
07:49As the temperature rose, the brass casings expanded.
07:53The powder charges ignited.
07:55Bullets began firing in random directions, ricocheting off the interior surfaces of the aircraft.
08:01Smith was now fighting a fire while live ammunition exploded around him.
08:05He made a decision that violated every safety protocol in the Army Air Force's manual.
08:10The .50 caliber rounds were feeding the chaos.
08:13Every box that cooked off created new shrapnel, new fires, new dangers.
08:19Smith began picking up the ammunition boxes with his bare hands.
08:22The metal was hot enough to sear flesh.
08:24He carried them to the wastegun windows and threw them out of the aircraft.
08:29Box after box.
08:30His hands blistered.
08:32The skin cracked and bled.
08:34He kept working.
08:36Between ammunition runs, he returned to fighting the fire.
08:39He had discovered that the only liquid available was the relief tube.
08:43The crew urinated into a funnel connected to a tube that vented outside the aircraft.
08:48Smith disconnected the tube and used the contents to douse the flames.
08:53When that ran out, he found a fire extinguisher and emptied it.
08:57When that ran out, he urinated directly on the burning surfaces.
09:01The Fock Wolfs had not finished.
09:03German fighter pilots could see the smoke trailing from the crippled bomber.
09:07They knew a damaged aircraft was an easy kill.
09:10They came in for repeated attack runs, cannon shells punching through the aluminum skin,
09:14adding new holes to a fuselage already perforated by flak and fire.
09:19Each pass forced Smith to abandon firefighting and man the wasteguns.
09:23He had never fired at an enemy aircraft.
09:26His training had involved stationary targets and classroom instruction.
09:30Now he was swinging a .50 caliber machine gun at fighters, diving past at over 300 miles per hour,
09:37squeezing the trigger in short bursts, trying to fill the air with enough lead to discourage another attack.
09:42Then he went back to the fire, then back to the guns, then back to the fire.
09:47For 90 minutes, Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith performed a one-man firefighting and defensive operation
09:53that should have been physically impossible.
09:55The man who had spent six weeks being told he was worthless
09:59was now the only thing standing between six surviving crewmen and certain death.
10:04Captain Johnson fought to keep the aircraft airborne.
10:07The controls were damaged.
10:09Several vital cables had been severed by cannon fire.
10:11The aircraft wanted to dive, to roll, to do anything except fly straight and level.
10:17Johnson wrestled with the yoke, coaxing every possible mile out of a machine that was dying around him.
10:23They needed to reach England.
10:25They needed to find an airfield.
10:27They needed to land before the fuselage burned through completely.
10:30Behind him, in the smoke and flame and chaos of the waste section,
10:35Smith had finally gained the upper hand.
10:37The fire was dying.
10:38The ammunition was gone.
10:40The tail gunner was still alive.
10:42But the English coast was still miles away.
10:44And the B-17 was held together by little more than faith and aluminum fragments.
10:51The English Channel stretched below them like a gray metal plate.
10:56Cold.
10:57Flat.
10:58Unforgiving.
11:00A B-17 that went down in those waters gave its crew approximately four minutes before hypothermia set in.
11:07Rescue was possible, but unlikely.
11:11The Channel had already swallowed hundreds of American airmen in the first months of 1943.
11:17Captain Johnson could see the fuel gauges dropping.
11:21The ruptured tank had dumped most of their reserve over France.
11:24What remained was barely enough to reach the English coast.
11:29Maybe.
11:30If the headwinds stayed light.
11:32If the remaining engines held together.
11:34If the fire weakened fuselage did not tear itself apart from the aerodynamic stresses of flight.
11:40Behind him, Smith had won his battle.
11:43The flames were out.
11:45Charred metal and melted wiring covered the waste section floor.
11:49The smell of burned rubber and aviation fuel saturated every surface.
11:55But the fire was dead.
11:56Killed by 90 minutes of desperate improvisation by a man who had never been trained for anything like this.
12:04Smith crawled aft to check on the tail gunner.
12:07Sergeant Roy Gibson was conscious but badly wounded.
12:11Shrapnel had torn through his legs and torso during the initial fighter attack.
12:15He had been trapped in the tail section throughout the fire.
12:18Unable to move forward.
12:20Unable to help.
12:22Able only to wait and hope that the flames would not reach him.
12:26Smith administered first aid with the aircraft's emergency kit.
12:30He bandaged the wounds as best he could.
12:33He made Gibson as comfortable as possible in the cramped tail compartment.
12:37Then, he returned to the waste section and manned the guns again,
12:41watching for any German fighters that might have followed them over the channel.
12:46None came.
12:47The Fock Wolves had turned back at the French coast,
12:50unwilling to venture over open water where British Spitfires patrolled.
12:55The crippled B-17 limped toward England alone,
12:59trailing smoke from a dozen holes in its aluminum skin.
13:02The coast of Cornwall appeared through the haze.
13:05Johnson began looking for any flat surface long enough to land a four-engine bomber.
13:10The normal procedure would be to return to Thurlai, their home base in Bedfordshire.
13:15That was impossible.
13:17The aircraft would never survive another 200 miles of flight.
13:20They needed to land immediately.
13:24RAF Predinac sat on the southwestern tip of England,
13:27a grass airfield originally built for coastal defense fighters.
13:31The runway was short by B-17 standards.
13:33The facilities were minimal.
13:35But it was flat, and it was close, and it was their only option.
13:40Johnson lined up his approach.
13:42The landing gear extended.
13:44Three green lights confirmed the wheels were down and locked.
13:47He reduced power and let the battered aircraft sink toward the grass strip.
13:51The touchdown was smooth.
13:54Johnson had flown 25 missions and survived everything the Lutwafa could throw at him.
13:59He knew how to land a damaged bomber.
14:01The wheels touched, the aircraft rolled, and for a moment it seemed like the ordeal was finally over.
14:08Then the fuselage cracked.
14:10The fire had done more damage than anyone realized.
14:13The aluminum skin had lost its structural integrity in the area around the radio compartment.
14:19The stress of landing, the weight of the aircraft settling onto its wheels, was more than the weakened metal could
14:25bear.
14:25The B-17 broke in half just behind the wing route.
14:29The nose section slid forward.
14:31The tail section ground to a halt separately.
14:33Rescue crews, who had been waiting at the edge of the runway, sprinted toward the wreckage, expecting to find bodies.
14:40What they found instead was Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith climbing out of the shattered fuselage,
14:45his hands wrapped in bloody bandages, his flight suit covered in soot and burns, helping a wounded tail gunner to
14:52safety.
14:53Ground crews counted the holes later.
14:563,500 individual penetrations from bullets, cannon shells, and shrapnel fragments.
15:02The aircraft had absorbed more damage than any B-17 they had ever seen.
15:07The fact that it had remained airborne long enough to reach England defied every engineering calculation.
15:13Captain Johnson wrote his mission report that evening.
15:16His assessment of Staff Sergeant Smith was unequivocal.
15:19The ball turret gunner's actions were solely responsible for the safe return of the aircraft and the lives of everyone
15:25aboard.
15:26Johnson recommended Smith for the Medal of Honor.
15:29The recommendation went up the chain of command.
15:31Within days, a correspondent from Stars and Stripes newspaper arrived at Thurlai to interview the unlikely hero.
15:38His name was Andy Rooney, 23 years old, a young journalist who would later become one of the most famous
15:45broadcasters in American television history.
15:48Rooney found Smith in the barracks.
15:50The sergeant with the burned hands and the disciplinary record and the reputation as the worst airman in the squadron.
15:56Rooney listened to the story.
15:58He took notes.
15:59He asked questions.
16:01Then, he wrote an article that would make Maynard Smith famous across two continents.
16:05The story hit the newspapers within a week.
16:08The Army Air Forces had been looking for heroes.
16:10The bombing campaign over Europe was costing thousands of young American lives.
16:15Morale on the home front needed boosting.
16:18And here was a story that seemed almost too perfect.
16:21The misfit who became a hero.
16:23The troublemaker who saved his crew.
16:26The man nobody wanted who turned out to be exactly what they needed.
16:30Smith was about to discover that fame could be as complicated as combat.
16:36Andy Rooney's article spread through the American military like wildfire.
16:40The story had everything a wartime propaganda office could want.
16:43An underdog.
16:44A burning aircraft.
16:45A one-man rescue operation.
16:48Within days of publication, Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith was the most famous enlisted airman in the European theater of operations.
16:55The Army Air Force's public relations machine activated immediately.
16:58Photographers arrived at Thurlie to capture images of the hero.
17:02Smith posed beside B-17s.
17:04He demonstrated the ball turret for cameras.
17:06He stood with officers who had barely spoken to him a week earlier.
17:10The pictures went out to newspapers across the United States.
17:13Mothers in Michigan and Ohio and California saw the small man with the burned hands
17:17and felt hope that their own sons might survive the war.
17:21Radio programs picked up the story.
17:23Commentators described the 90-minute battle against fire and fighters.
17:26They emphasized the details that made Smith memorable.
17:29The man nobody wanted.
17:31The first combat mission.
17:32The aircraft that broke in half on landing.
17:35Each retelling added new layers of drama to an event that needed no embellishment.
17:40Smith received mail.
17:41Thousands of letters from strangers.
17:43Women proposed marriage.
17:44Children asked for autographs.
17:46Veterans of the First World War wrote to congratulate him.
17:49The postal clerks at Thurlie had never processed so much correspondence for a single enlisted man.
17:54The men of the 423rd Bombardment Squadron watched this transformation with complicated emotions.
18:00They had spent six weeks avoiding Maynard Smith.
18:02They had complained about his attitude, his laziness, his inability to function as part of a team.
18:08Now that same man was being celebrated as a national hero.
18:11The newspapers called him brave.
18:13The radio called him exceptional.
18:15The Army Air Forces called him exactly the kind of soldier America needed.
18:19The squadron knew a different truth.
18:21Smith had been genuinely heroic on May 1st.
18:24No one disputed that.
18:25His actions aboard the burning B-17 had saved lives and demonstrated courage under circumstances that would have broken most
18:32men.
18:32But heroism in combat did not change the fundamental nature of the man who performed it.
18:38Smith remained difficult.
18:40He still argued with officers.
18:42He still lectured other airmen on subjects they had no interest in discussing.
18:46He still believed that his age and intelligence entitled him to special treatment.
18:50The only difference now was that he had a Medal of Honor recommendation supporting his sense of superiority.
18:56The attention went to his head almost immediately.
18:58Smith began signing autographs with a new signature.
19:01Sergeant Maynard Smith, CMH.
19:04The Congressional Medal of Honor he had not yet received.
19:07He told and retold the story of May, first to anyone who would listen, and the story grew larger with
19:13each telling.
19:14Details shifted.
19:15Emphasis changed.
19:16The 90 minutes of desperate firefighting became an epic narrative in which Smith played an increasingly central role.
19:23Other crewmen noticed the exaggerations.
19:25Small inconsistencies at first, then larger ones.
19:29Smith began describing actions he had not performed, decisions he had not made, conversations he had not had.
19:35The core of the story remained true.
19:38He had fought the fire.
19:39He had saved the crew.
19:40But the decorations around that core became increasingly fictional.
19:44This was the paradox of Maynard Smith, a genuine hero who could not stop embellishing his genuine heroism.
19:51A man who had earned respect through extraordinary actions, but squandered that respect through ordinary vanity.
19:57The squadron tolerated him because they had no choice.
20:00He was about to receive the highest military decoration the United States could bestow.
20:05Criticizing him publicly would reflect poorly on the entire unit.
20:09The Medal of Honor recommendation moved through official channels.
20:13General Ira Eaker, commanding the 8th Air Force, reviewed the paperwork personally.
20:18The evidence was overwhelming.
20:20Captain Johnson's Report
20:21The Witness Statements
20:23The Physical Condition of the Aircraft
20:26Every document confirmed that Staff Sergeant Smith had performed acts of valor far beyond what could reasonably be expected of
20:33any soldier.
20:35Eaker approved the recommendation and forwarded it to Washington.
20:38The War Department reviewed the case and concurred.
20:42The medal was authorized.
20:43A ceremony would be scheduled.
20:46For the first time in the history of American military aviation,
20:50an enlisted airman would receive the Medal of Honor in the European Theater.
20:54The date was set for July.
20:57Secretary of War Henry Stimson would travel to England personally to present the decoration.
21:02It would be the largest public ceremony the 8th Air Force had ever conducted.
21:07Photographers would document every moment.
21:10Newsreel cameras would capture the event for theaters across America.
21:14The story of Snuffy Smith would reach its triumphant conclusion in front of the entire world.
21:20The Army began planning.
21:22They arranged for a formation of B-17s to fly overhead during the presentation.
21:27They constructed a ceremonial platform.
21:30They notified the press corps.
21:32They coordinated every detail to ensure that the event would generate maximum positive coverage for the war effort.
21:38They did not coordinate with Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith.
21:42No one told him the date of his own Medal of Honor ceremony.
21:45No one confirmed that he understood the schedule.
21:48The public relations officers assumed someone else had handled the notification.
21:52The squadron officers assumed the same.
21:55In the confusion of planning a major military event, the guest of honor fell through the cracks.
22:01July 15th arrived.
22:03Secretary Stimson stood at the podium.
22:06The B-17s circled overhead.
22:08The cameras rolled.
22:10The assembled dignitaries waited.
22:13Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith was nowhere to be found.
22:17A search party fanned out across Thurlay Airfield.
22:21Officers checked the barracks.
22:22They checked the officers' club.
22:24They checked every building where an airman might reasonably spend a summer morning.
22:29Secretary of War Stimson waited at the ceremonial platform with the patience of a man accustomed to military delays.
22:36The B-17s continued circling overhead, burning fuel that the 8th Air Force could not afford to waste.
22:44Someone finally thought to check the mess hall.
22:47Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith was in the kitchen.
22:50He was not eating breakfast.
22:52He was scraping leftover food from metal trays into garbage bins.
22:56The hero of May 1st, the man about to receive the highest military decoration his country could bestow,
23:03had been assigned to kitchen police duty as punishment for his latest disciplinary infraction.
23:09The officer who found him did not record what was said.
23:12The moment was too absurd for official documentation.
23:16Smith was rushed from the kitchen to the ceremony, still wearing his work uniform, grease stains visible on his sleeves.
23:24He barely had time to clean his hands before Secretary Stimson placed the Medal of Honor around his neck.
23:30The newsreel cameras captured everything.
23:34The photographs went out to newspapers across America.
23:37The story that emerged was carefully edited.
23:40The Army emphasized the heroism, the ceremony, the historic significance of the first enlisted Medal of Honor in Europe.
23:48They did not mention that the recipient had been washing dishes when they found him.
23:53But the men at Thurlay knew.
23:55The story spread through the 8th Air Force within hours.
23:59Snuffy Smith, the hero who could not stay out of trouble long enough to attend his own medal ceremony.
24:05The irony was too perfect to remain secret.
24:09For years afterward, veterans would tell the story as proof that courage and character were not the same thing.
24:16Smith flew four more combat missions after receiving the Medal of Honor.
24:20Each time he climbed into the ball turret of a B-17 and watched the ground fall away beneath him.
24:26Each time he scanned the skies for German fighters and waited for the flak to start bursting around the formation.
24:33He had proven himself capable of extraordinary heroism.
24:36But heroism did not make the fear disappear.
24:39The fifth mission was his last.
24:42The psychological toll of combat had accumulated beyond what his mind could process.
24:46Smith began exhibiting symptoms that the Army Air Force's medical officers recognized but did not fully understand.
24:54Nightmares.
24:55Anxiety.
24:55Inability to concentrate.
24:57The modern term is post-traumatic stress disorder.
25:01In 1943, they called it operational exhaustion.
25:05The doctors grounded him.
25:07No more combat flying.
25:08The Medal of Honor recipient, who had saved six lives over breast, would spend the rest of his war behind
25:14a desk, processing paperwork far from the sound of engines and gunfire.
25:19Smith did not handle the transition well.
25:22He had become accustomed to the attention that came with his Medal.
25:25Journalists still wanted interviews.
25:28Photographers still wanted pictures.
25:29But the daily reality of his life was now clerical work in an administrative office, surrounded by men who had
25:36heard all his stories and grown tired of hearing them again.
25:39His disciplinary problems continued.
25:42Perhaps they worsened.
25:43The official records show a pattern of conflicts with superior officers, failures to complete assigned duties, and general inability to
25:51function within military structure.
25:52The same characteristics that had made him an outcast before May 1st remained unchanged after his moment of glory.
25:59By December of 1944, the Army had run out of patience.
26:04Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith, holder of the Medal of Honor, was reduced in rank to private.
26:10The demotion was unprecedented.
26:12No Medal of Honor recipient had ever been stripped of rank while still in service.
26:16The Army did not publicize the action.
26:18The contrast between the hero of the newspapers and the problem soldier of the personnel files was too damaging to
26:25acknowledge publicly.
26:27Smith was permanently grounded.
26:29His flying days were over.
26:31His usefulness to the war effort had been reduced to whatever administrative tasks he could complete without causing additional problems.
26:39In February of 1945, the Army sent him home.
26:43The war in Europe had four months left to run.
26:46The 8th Air Force would continue bombing Germany until the final surrender.
26:51Thousands of young Americans would die in B-17s over targets that Smith would never see.
26:57He returned to Michigan.
26:59His hometown of Cairo organized a parade.
27:02The citizens who remembered the spoiled troublemaker now celebrated the returning hero.
27:07They lined the streets and cheered.
27:09They waved flags.
27:11They welcomed back a man who had done something extraordinary on a single afternoon in May of 1943.
27:18None of them knew about the demotion.
27:21None of them knew about the disciplinary record.
27:23They knew only what the newspapers had told them.
27:26A local boy had earned the Medal of Honor.
27:30Smith stood in the back of an open car and waved to the crowds.
27:33For one afternoon, he was everything the Army had wanted him to be.
27:37A symbol.
27:39An inspiration.
27:40A reason to believe that ordinary Americans could become heroes when their country needed them most.
27:47The parade ended.
27:48The crowds dispersed.
27:50And Maynard Smith began the long process of figuring out what came next.
27:56The war ended in May of 1945.
27:59Germany surrendered unconditionally.
28:02The 8th Air Force had dropped over 600,000 tons of bombs on occupied Europe.
28:08More than 26,000 American airmen had died in the campaign.
28:12Another 28,000 had been captured or listed as missing.
28:17The strategic bombing offensive had been the most costly air operation in military history.
28:22Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith had contributed 90 minutes to that effort.
28:27One mission.
28:29One burning aircraft.
28:31One afternoon of extraordinary courage, followed by months of ordinary failure.
28:37His discharge papers arrived on May 26, 1945.
28:41He was 34 years old, a former private with a Medal of Honor, and no clear idea of what civilian
28:47life would look like.
28:49The transition proved difficult.
28:51Smith had never been good at holding jobs before the war.
28:55His personality had not changed during his time in uniform.
28:58He remained argumentative, opinionated, and convinced of his own superiority.
29:03These characteristics had made him unpopular in the Army.
29:07They made him equally unpopular in the civilian workforce.
29:10He cycled through employment.
29:12Tax work.
29:13Clerical positions.
29:15Nothing lasted.
29:16Smith would start a job, clash with supervisors, and either quit or be fired.
29:22The Medal of Honor opened some doors, but his behavior closed them again.
29:27Employers who hired a war hero discovered they had also hired a difficult employee.
29:32His personal life followed similar patterns.
29:35Smith married again after the war.
29:37The marriage failed.
29:38He married a third time.
29:40That marriage also failed.
29:42The pattern repeated itself.
29:44Women were attracted to the heroic story.
29:47They were less attracted to the complicated man behind it.
29:50Child support obligations accumulated.
29:53Legal troubles mounted.
29:54By the early 1950s, Maynard Smith had become what he had always been before May 1, 1943, a man who
30:03could not quite make his life work.
30:05The Medal of Honor sat in a drawer somewhere.
30:07The newspaper clippings yellowed in scrapbooks.
30:10The fame that had briefly transformed him into a national symbol faded into the ordinary struggles of middle-class American
30:18life.
30:18He was not alone in this experience.
30:20Thousands of veterans returned from the war with decorations and trauma and no framework for processing either.
30:28The generation that had saved the world came home to find that heroism did not pay the mortgage.
30:34Combat skills did not translate to civilian employment.
30:38The psychological wounds of warfare did not heal simply because the shooting had stopped.
30:43The Veterans Administration existed to help men like Smith.
30:46But the resources were limited and the understanding was incomplete.
30:51Post-traumatic stress remained poorly understood.
30:55The men who jumped at loud noises, who could not sleep without nightmares,
30:59who found themselves unable to connect with families who had not shared their experiences,
31:04these men were expected to simply adjust.
31:07Many could not.
31:09Smith coped in his own way.
31:11He talked about the war constantly.
31:13He told the story of May 1st to anyone who would listen, and to many who would not.
31:19The tale grew more elaborate over the years.
31:22Details were added.
31:24His role expanded.
31:25By the 1970s, Smith's version of events had him personally flying the damaged B-17 back to England,
31:33a feat that had actually been performed by a different airman on a different mission.
31:38Veterans who knew the truth said nothing publicly.
31:40The code of military brotherhood protected even difficult men from outside criticism.
31:46Smith was one of them, regardless of his flaws.
31:50The medal of honor he wore represented something larger than any individual.
31:55To attack his credibility was to attack the credibility of every man who had served.
32:00The embellishments bothered some historians.
32:02The documented record of May 1st was remarkable enough without fictional additions.
32:09Smith had genuinely fought a fire for 90 minutes.
32:12He had genuinely thrown burning ammunition out of a moving aircraft.
32:17He had genuinely saved the lives of six crewmen.
32:21These facts required no enhancement.
32:23But Smith could not leave the story alone.
32:27Each retelling added new layers.
32:29Each interview introduced new elements.
32:32The man who had performed one afternoon of authentic heroism spent decades constructing an expanded mythology around that single event.
32:41Perhaps this was understandable.
32:43The 90 minutes over Brest had been the high point of his entire existence.
32:49Everything before had been failure.
32:51Everything after would be struggle.
32:54That one afternoon stood alone as proof that Maynard Smith was capable of greatness.
33:00He clung to it because he had nothing else.
33:03The years passed.
33:05Smith grew older.
33:07The other veterans of the 306th Bomb Group held reunions and shared memories.
33:11Some had prospered after the war.
33:14Others had struggled.
33:15All of them carried pieces of their experience that could never be fully communicated to anyone who had not been
33:22there.
33:23Smith attended some of these gatherings.
33:25He was tolerated rather than welcomed.
33:28The men remembered who he had been at Thurley.
33:30They remembered the disciplinary problems, the arrogance, the kitchen police duty on the morning of his medal ceremony.
33:38They also remembered May 1st.
33:41The two memories existed in uncomfortable proximity.
33:45In 1979, Smith gave his final major interview.
33:49A military magazine called Sergeants published his account of the mission.
33:54The story had reached its most elaborate form.
33:57Smith described actions he could not have performed.
33:59Conversations he could not have had.
34:02A version of events that bore only partial resemblance to the documented record.
34:08Nobody corrected him.
34:09He was 68 years old.
34:11The Medal of Honor still hung from his ribbon.
34:14Whatever distortions had accumulated over 36 years, the core truth remained.
34:20He had been a hero once.
34:22That would have to be enough.
34:26The Medal of Honor has been awarded approximately 3,500 times in American military history.
34:32Each recipient represents an act of valor so extraordinary that it stands apart from the millions of individual moments of
34:38courage that occur in every war.
34:40The standard is deliberately extreme.
34:43The decoration is reserved for those who risk their lives above and beyond any reasonable expectation of duty.
34:49Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith met that standard on May 1st, 1943.
34:54Whatever complications followed, whatever failures accumulated, the 90 minutes over Brest satisfied the most rigorous criteria the American military possessed.
35:04He had been one man against fire and fighters and the reasonable certainty of death.
35:09He had chosen to stay when leaving was easier.
35:12He had saved lives that would otherwise have been lost.
35:15The historical record places Smith in a specific context.
35:19He was the first enlisted airman to receive the Medal of Honor in the European Theater.
35:23Only two others would join him before the war ended.
35:27Technical Sergeant Forrest Vossler earned his medal in December of 1943 for similar actions aboard a burning B-17 over
35:34Bremen.
35:35Staff Sergeant Archibald Matthews received his posthumously for staying at the controls of a crippled bomber long enough for his
35:42crew to bail out.
35:44Three enlisted men.
35:45Three medals of honor.
35:47Thousands of other airmen who performed acts of courage that went unrecognized.
35:51The mathematics of recognition were brutal.
35:54The 8th Air Force flew hundreds of thousands of individual combat sorties.
35:59Each sortie placed ten men in danger.
36:01Each mission produced countless moments of bravery, sacrifice, and determination.
36:06The vast majority of these moments were never recorded.
36:10Men died heroically in aircraft that simply disappeared.
36:13Crews fought fires and wounds and mechanical failures over hostile territory, and no one survived to document what they had
36:20done.
36:21Smith was lucky.
36:22His aircraft made it back.
36:23His pilot wrote a report.
36:25A journalist happened to be looking for stories.
36:27The machinery of recognition activated around him because the circumstances aligned.
36:33Other men performed equivalent acts and received nothing.
36:36The randomness of survival determined whose heroism would be remembered.
36:40This is not to diminish what Smith accomplished.
36:43The Medal of Honor was earned, not given.
36:45But the broader truth of aerial combat in 1943 was that heroism was common and recognition was rare.
36:53The men who flew B-17s into German airspace accepted the probability of death every time they climbed aboard.
36:59They did not expect medals.
37:01They expected only to do their duty, and if fortune favored them, to survive.
37:06Smith lived four more decades after his discharge.
37:09He moved to Florida in his later years, settling in the Tampa Bay area where the warm climate suited his
37:15aging body.
37:15The Medal of Honor opened occasional doors.
37:18He attended ceremonies.
37:19He spoke at veterans' events.
37:21He remained, until the end, a man defined by 90 minutes that had occurred when he was 31 years old.
37:27His health declined gradually.
37:29The accumulated stresses of age and hard living took their toll.
37:33The burned hands that had thrown ammunition boxes through the wastegun windows developed arthritis.
37:38The lungs that had inhaled smoke and fumes over breast grew weaker.
37:42The body that had performed impossible physical feats in 1943 became an ordinary elderly frame in 1984.
37:51Maynard Harrison Smith died on May 11, 1984, in St. Petersburg, Florida.
37:56He was 72 years old.
37:58Heart failure was listed as the cause.
38:00He had outlived most of the men who had flown with him, and most of the men who had refused
38:05to fly with him.
38:06The Army honored his passing despite the complicated history.
38:09Medal of Honor recipients are entitled to burial at Arlington National Cemetery, regardless of their subsequent service record.
38:15The demotion did not matter.
38:17The disciplinary file did not matter.
38:20The only thing that mattered was the blue ribbon with the white stars and the gold medal that hung from
38:26it.
38:26Smith was laid to rest among the rows of white headstones that marked the final resting place of American military
38:32dead.
38:33Generals lie near privates.
38:35Heroes lie near ordinary soldiers.
38:38The democracy of death erases the distinctions that seem so important in life.
38:43His grave marker identifies him simply.
38:45Name.
38:46Rank.
38:47Dates of service.
38:49Medal of Honor.
38:49The stone says nothing about kitchen police duty, or disciplinary problems, or embellished interviews.
38:56It says nothing about the marriages that failed, or the jobs that did not last.
39:01It records only the essential fact.
39:03This man served.
39:05This man was honored.
39:07This man rests here.
39:09The question that remains is how to remember him.
39:12The easy narrative wants heroes to be heroic in all things.
39:16It wants courage in combat to reflect courage in character.
39:20It wants the man who saves lives to be worthy of admiration in every aspect of his existence.
39:26Maynard Smith refused to fit that narrative.
39:29He was difficult before the war, during the war, and after the war.
39:33He was heroic for 90 minutes and problematic for 72 years.
39:38He earned the nation's highest honor and the nation's frustration in equal measure.
39:43Perhaps that complexity is the most honest legacy he could leave.
39:48The 306th Bomb Group completed 342 combat missions before the war ended.
39:54They dropped over 22,000 tons of bombs on targets across occupied Europe.
40:00171 of their aircraft were lost in action.
40:03The men who flew from Thurley paid a price measured in thousands of individual lives,
40:08each one representing a family that received a telegram beginning with words no parent or wife ever wanted to read.
40:15The group earned a reputation as one of the most experienced units in the 8th Air Force.
40:20They were first over Germany in January of 1943.
40:24They flew the dangerous early missions when fighter escort was limited and losses were catastrophic.
40:30They adapted, survived, and continued flying until there was nothing left to bomb.
40:35Maynard Smith's story became part of that larger history.
40:38The 306th Bomb Group Association preserved the records of every mission, every crew, every aircraft that flew from the grass
40:47runways of Thurley.
40:48Smith appears in those records exactly as he was, a difficult man who did an extraordinary thing,
40:54a hero who could not escape his own limitations.
40:57The National Museum of the Mighty 8th Air Force stands in Pooler, Georgia, outside Savannah.
41:03The museum preserves the history of the air campaign over Europe through artifacts, documents, and personal testimonies.
41:10Visitors can walk through a restored B-17 and understand the cramped spaces where young men fought and died.
41:17They can read the names of the fallen on memorial walls.
41:21They can learn about men like Smith, who earned recognition, and men who earned none.
41:26The ball turret hangs beneath the aircraft like a glass and steel egg.
41:30Museum guides explain how a small man would curl into the fetal position inside that sphere,
41:36rotating with the turret as he tracked enemy fighters through his gun sight.
41:40They describe the isolation of the position, the vulnerability,
41:44the absolute dependence on the crew above to crank the turret back into position if electrical power failed.
41:50Smith's turret lost power over breast.
41:53He cranked himself out manually and climbed into a burning fuselage.
41:57That detail alone captures something essential about aerial combat in 1943.
42:02Technology failed constantly.
42:04Survival depended on human improvisation.
42:07The men who lived were often the men who refused to accept that the situation was hopeless.
42:12The airfield at Thurley still exists.
42:15The runways have been converted to other uses.
42:18The buildings where Smith slept and ate and caused disciplinary problems have been demolished or repurposed.
42:24But the land remembers.
42:26Markers identified the site as a former American bomber base.
42:30Visitors from the United States occasionally make pilgrimages to stand where their fathers and grandfathers once stood.
42:36The English countryside absorbed enormous quantities of American blood during the Second World War.
42:41Young men from Michigan and Texas and California flew over those green fields on their way to Germany.
42:47Many never returned.
42:49The ones who did carried memories that would last the rest of their lives.
42:54Thurley was one of dozens of such bases scattered across eastern England.
42:57Each one has its own history of courage and loss.
43:01Smith's Medal of Honor remains part of the historical record.
43:04The citation describes his actions in official language stripped of emotion.
43:09Fighting fires.
43:10Administering first aid.
43:12Manning guns.
43:13Throwing burning ammunition overboard.
43:15The bureaucratic prose cannot capture what it felt like to stand in a burning aircraft with German fighters attacking and
43:22three crewmen already gone.
43:24It can only document that these things happened.
43:27The man himself defies simple categorization.
43:30He was not a natural hero.
43:32He was not even a competent soldier by most measures.
43:35But when the moment arrived that demanded everything a human being could give, Maynard Smith gave it.
43:41The 90 minutes over Brest revealed a capacity for courage that surprised everyone, including perhaps Smith himself.
43:48That is the lesson his story offers.
43:51Heroism does not require perfection.
43:53It does not require likability.
43:55It requires only the willingness to act when action is needed, regardless of fear, regardless of odds, regardless of what
44:03came before or what might come after.
44:05Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith was a flawed man who did a perfect thing.
44:10That should be enough for any legacy.
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44:25We are rescuing forgotten stories from Dusty Archives every single day.
44:30Stories about gunners who saved lives with burned hands and bare fists.
44:35Real people.
44:36Real heroism.
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45:07And you are helping make that happen.
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