LT COL BYRD W. "BIRDDOG" RYLAND - III

Below in my Uncle Bert’s words is his description of another flight in late August of 1944 that didn’t end a whole lot better than the first one.

“We were over Mersburg, Germany and received a hit between number 3 and number 4 engines. It knocked us out of formation but I was able to control the aircraft while we feathered number 4 engine. We then got a fire in number 3 engine and feathered it. About that time we were hit by ME-109s. They didn’t stick around except for two passes due to about four P-51s coming in to help us. We could not maintain altitude and started down with one of the P-51s staying with us. At about 4,000 feet we were able to maintain altitude. About that time number 3 prop came out of feather and started to windmill out of control. The prop gear box housing became red hot and the gear box froze. When this happened the prop shaft broke and the prop started to teeter so badly that it literally knocked off the engine nacelle.

I was unable to maintain altitude so again we started down. We threw everything out we could find loose. Flack jackets, ammunition, guns and anything we could rip off. We even tried to drop the ball turret. We advised our escort P-51 that we might have to bail out and for him to call Air Sea Rescue and give him our position.

When we reached the French coast my navigator gave up a heading to Manston Air Force Station, England. The prop was teetering and the aircraft throttles vibrating so badly that the only way we could keep them at full power was by jabbing at them. I finally told the men to bail out. At that time, the P-51 said he couldn’t stay with us as he was out of fuel and that he had called Air Sea Rescue and they were on the way. The crew decided not to bail out and we would stick with me to the end. By using every trick in the book we were able to maintain approximately 1000 feet until we were about two miles from the runway. When I asked for gear down all hell broke loose and we started down and hit the ground about 200 feet short and bounced onto the runway. At that time number 3 prop tore loose and chopped up the underside of the fuselage from the chin turret to the tail gun position and then spun off onto the runway. After the aircraft came to a stop we all got out and not only kissed the ground but also the good old B-17 that again had brought us home. We counted over 150 holes in the fuselage and wings. We spent the night at Manston and returned to the base the next day….I don’t know what happened to that B-17 but it was flyable with a new engine or engines. I think we will all remember that P-51 with “RAMBLIN’ RASCAL” written on its side.”

Bert served in the Eighth Bomber Command, United States Army Air Force, 379th Bombardment Group (Heavy) which was stationed at USAAF Station 117, Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, England, June 29, 1943 to July 4, 1945. In a March 1985 copy of Contrails, a publication of The 379th Association, Inc., a non-profit organization of former men connected with this bombardment group and to which my uncle belonged, has a report in it on data from the operational records that were kept on all Groups. It states that “the 379th BG excelled in 1) Number of Sorties, 2) Bomb Tonnages delivered by 8th AF Groups, 3) Bombing Accuracy, average percent of bombs dropped within 1,000 feet of assigned MPI’s; 4) Bomb Tonnages dropped within 1,000 feet of assigned MPI’s; 5) Abort Rate; 6) Loss Rate – the 379th BG had the second lowest number of aircraft in this category.



It was only after I became an adult and got interested in genealogy that I learned the extent of my Uncle Bert’s service to our country. I was born in 1935 and as the picture shows, my uncles (my mother’s brothers) were teenagers. I have vague recollections of him coming to see our family during the war years, and one very concrete recollection of him buying both my sister and I each a very special doll of our choice. Of course after the war when he married and settled down in Long Beach, where the Ryland family had lived since the early 1930s, he became a much more real presence in the lives of his nieces and nephews. For a while he headed up the “air and rescue squad” run from March Air Force base near Riverside, California, and in fact after the 1956 mid-air crash of two commercial airliners over the Grand Canyon he was the person sent down into the gorge for an examination of the wreckage. My sister and I grew up hearing stories of airplane crashes and it took me a long, long time before I would ever set foot on an airplane.

TO BE CONTINUED