S/Sgt "Red" Dillon Bags Ten Enemy Fighters Before Bailing Out

October 10, 1943

Everett Lewis was the left waist gunner on the 95th BG B-17 Situation Normal that flew on the right side of Fritz Blitz on the October 10, 1943 Munster Raid. 

Lewis remembered watching Fritz Blitz – by this time straggling out of formation and falling behind – come under a heavy German fighter attack and thinking to himself “you poor, poor bastards” and he watched closely sure that when they finished them off, they would be next.

That’s when he counted Fritz Blitz’s ball turret gunner (Red) shoot down 10 German fighters before it began the sickening slow-motion fall to the ground. 

He didn’t know then who the ball turret gunner was but P-47’s suddenly arrived on the scene and like that, the fight was over. Situation Normal made it home. 

Lewis figured that the reason they didn’t make a big deal over Red shooting down the 10 planes was because he never made it back, and 4 days later was the second Schweinfurt Raid. 

Red remembered the German planes had yellow noses and were coming in so close he could see the pilots’ (goggled) faces. He stated they were flying in so close he couldn’t miss. 

On the 1st one he got, he said there were 3 fighters coming up wing tip to wing tip. He put his gunsight on the middle and fired. It exploded. After that they were everywhere, all he had to do was press the triggers.

He tried to hit them in the nose because then they seemed to explode. He thought he got an 11th because when shooting at one, another flew through his stream of fire and it sawed off the top of his stabilizer. That was the last thing he saw before the ball turret became engulfed in black smoke. Red bailed out and was held in Stalag 17B. 

Red's son, Paul first heard this story in 2002 when he ordered a 95thBG jacket from Jim Lewis, Everett's nephew

Courtesy of Paul Dillon