{"id":5326,"date":"2022-08-14T16:29:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-14T16:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2022\/08\/14\/wwii-tail-gunners-harrowing-story-preserved-in-a-comic\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:02:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:02:55","slug":"wwii-tail-gunners-harrowing-story-preserved-in-a-comic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/veterans\/2022\/08\/14\/wwii-tail-gunners-harrowing-story-preserved-in-a-comic\/","title":{"rendered":"WWII tail gunner\u2019s harrowing story preserved in a comic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

RICHMOND, Va. \u2014 World War II<\/a> veteran Russell L. Scott, comic book hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, sure, why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The late Scott, a B-25<\/a> tail gunner in the U.S. Army Air Corps who was held as a prisoner of war, certainly had a story to tell. To sum up, as he told me in 2014, seven decades after it all happened in 1944, \u201cI got to Corsica on the 18th of May. On the 23rd of May, I went on my first mission. And on the 25th of May, I went on my last mission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission on May 25 was his last because enemy fire hit his B-25 over Italy. Scott attempted to bail out, but the escape hatch wouldn\u2019t open, so he had to head-butt the canopy over the tail gunner\u2019s position to get out, said Ralph Fields, who volunteered with Scott at the Virginia War Memorial and became a close friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Former
Former WWII POW Russell Scott points to the tail gunner position on a B25J during an interview at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, March 26, 2014. (Bob Brown\/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Scott slid onto the plane\u2019s tail assembly as the plane was going down, sitting there momentarily with his feet dangling. The reason for his hesitation? He had a parachute, but he had never used it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe said the ground kept getting closer and closer and that helped him make up his mind,\u201d Fields recalled. \u201cHe just had a way of telling his story that fascinated everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott hit the ground awkwardly, suffering a broken back, and was immediately captured by Germans, leading to a long journey of being moved as a prisoner of war from Italy to Germany to Poland and back to Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one prison camp, he transformed powdered milk cans into stovepipes \u2014 he\u2019d done body-and-fender work back home so he was familiar with working with metal \u2014 so the coal stoves in each crowded room wouldn\u2019t asphyxiate the inhabitants. He surely saved lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He survived the war, returned to his native Richmond and became a longtime volunteer at the local veterans hospital as well as at the Virginia War Memorial. He died in 2019 at age 99.<\/p>\n\n\n\t