15. B-17 Aerial Gunner Clark Gable
Clark Gable needed combat footage for his recruitment film. So in 1943, he flew five combat missions as a B-17 gunner, one of which took him 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 lost an engine and had its stabilizer damaged after it was hit by antiaircraft fire and was attacked by fighters. Over Germany, his B-17 had two crewmen wounded and another killed after their bomber was struck by flak, and shrapnel went through Gable’s boot and almost took off his head.
When MGM heard of its most valuable actor’s close brushes with death, it worked its connections to have him reassigned to noncombat duty. For his service in Europe, Gable was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal, and in late 1943, he was ordered back to the US to edit the film. He hoped for another shot at combat once he was done, but none came. By the summer of 1944, after the Normandy invasion came and went without a combat assignment, he finally gave up and requested to be relieved from active duty on grounds that he was forty-three years old by then, and overage for combat. He stayed in the reserves until 1947 when he finally resigned from his commission.
