Clark Gable Was a Real Life B-17 Waist Gunner
Clark Gable needed combat footage for his recruitment film. To obtain it, he flew five combat missions as a gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress, including a bombing raid into Germany. His presence in the missions was for propaganda and PR purposes, but the dangers he ran were all too real. In one mission, Gable’s B-17 was attacked by enemy fighters and hit by antiaircraft fire, and in the process lost an engine and had its stabilizer damaged. Over Germany, his B-17 had two crewmen wounded and another killed after it was struck by flak. Shrapnel went through Gable’s boot, and almost took off his head.
When MGM heard of its most valuable actor’s brushes with death, it worked its connections to have Gable reassigned to noncombat duty. For his service in Europe, he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal, and in late 1943, Gable was ordered back home to edit the film. He hoped for another combat assignment, but none came. By the summer of 1944, after the Normandy invasion came and went without a combat assignment, Gable finally gave up and requested to be relieved from active duty on grounds that he was 43-years-old by then, and overage for combat. He stayed in the Air Forces reserves until 1947, when he finally resigned his commission.
