Joe Jones Jr was Tail gunner on B-17 "Mr Lucky" 42-38035 on the 1 March 1945 mission to Ulm, Germany. Flying on the crew's 22nd mission in the low element approaching the coast of Belgium, cloud banks rose to more than 13,000 ft.



As the Fortress was suddenly immersed in the mist and just as quickly out of it, Jones became aware of violent movement. Then he heard a loud noise after which he realized that the thunder of the engines and the vibration he had felt had ceased. Pressure in his ears told him the Fortress was rapidly losing altitude and, alarmed, he called the pilot on the interphone.



As there was no response, he understood the ship was out of control and he grabbed his parachute aiming to jump via the escape door just behind him. As the door would not open, he pulled the hinge pins and tried to kick it out, bracing himself against the other side of the narrow fuselage in order to get leverage. To no avail, the door stuck fast.



He then tried to get forward to the waist section only to find that the fuselage had been distorted, with twisted metal and loose cables barring his way. Just what had occurred - a Flak hit, a collision or some structural failure - he didn't know, but he could tell the bomber was going down fast.



In desperation, he even thought of releasing his parachute and feeding it out over the tail guns to act as an air brake. Realizing this would be useless, he again braced himself across the fuselage, trying to relax, thinking of his mother.



He remembered later taking out a cigarette, lighting it - having to press his old lighter's mechanism three times before a flame came out - taking one draw... and then oblivion... Three days passed before Jones regained consciousness in a military hospital.



Jones had "floated" down in the severed tail section of "Mr Lucky" and was the sole survivor of the nine-man crew. After the crash of the tail with Jones in it, two local farmers, Henri Ryckeboer and Kamiel Glorie approached the brook where it had hit the ground. They were soon joined by their neighbor Kamiel Vanhee and suddenly the three men heard a groan.



They discovered a coiled up body, its face heavily blooded. They carefully took the groaning airman out of his position and laid him on the ground. Ryckeboer went to his farm to fetch a chair and he and the two others carried Jones to the Ryckeboer farm where he was put in a bed. Ryckeboer's wife, Josephine, heated up some water and washed away the blood from Jones' face. Doctor Leclaire from Leffinge was called and gave him a pain-killing injection.



Jones opened and closed his eyes and made hand signs that he was felling better. Gilbert Deschepper, a municipal clerk who had heard the explosions of some of the bombs of the Fortress, rushed on his bicycle to the crash scene - parts of the plane were spread over the whole area - and learned that there was a survivor at the Ryckboer farm. He was welcomed there with open arms, as he could speak and understand English.



Deschepper contacted an Allied military doctor and Jones was soon brought to a British Field Hospital in Bredene, near Ostend, Belgium. When the Ryckeboer family came to visit him there, they were told that Jones only suffered from a badly cut tongue, a burst vein and a bruised thigh.



An 8th AF examining commission concluded afterward that the lightness of the tail section together with the large tail wingspan had somehow acted as a glider and slowed the fall. Jones' relaxed condition helped him further in "softening" the shock.



After five days in a sort of daze, Jones woke up in his hospital bed and finding out that he was OK, he stood up and started walking. The nurse who noticed him called a doctor who told him it was a sign that he was really getting better. The next day, Jones wrote his mother that he was all right, signing "Lucky Joe"...



Every time he asked what had happened to his fellow crew members, Jones received evasive answers. He was just told that another survivor, Sgt Stanley Lejkowski, Waist Gunner on #43-28273 which had collided with his own B-17, was also in the field hospital. Gilbert Deschepper, who visited him every day, finally told Jones that a requiem Mass had been celebrated in the Slijpe church in memory of the sixteen men who had lost their lives in the incident.



After 18 days in the Bredene hospital, Jones was flown back to England for recuperation at the 82nd General Hospital where he stayed two weeks. Before he left that hospital on 16 April 1945, a nurse had told him "You've had it, Joe, you'll never have to fly in a B-17 anymore!", to which he replied "Bet that I'll fly over your hospital in a week?" Jones then rode a train to his 385th BG station at Great Ashfield.



There, he could convince the pilot of his new crew and who knew his amazing story, to fly over the 82nd GH. When the hospital staff got out to watch the low-flying B-17, Jones signaled "I'm flying !" with an Aldis lamp from his Tail Gunner position. He later confided that he doubted that the onlookers were able to decipher his message, but that they certainly knew it was him!



As the war was ending, there was no need for Tail Gunners on missions anymore, so Jones got back to the US, serving as a Military Policeman at Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia. He met his wife Ruth there and they were married in 1946.



In 1961, Jones traveled to Belgium and met Gilbert Deschepper who led him to the place where he had landed. They visited the Ryckeboer farm where he had received first aid. On a return trip in November 1989, Jones met Henri Ryckeboer again and learned that Kamiel Glorie, Kamiel Vanhee en doctor Leclaire had passed away in the meantime. Joe Jones stayed in the USAF after the war and ended his military career in 1966 with the rank of Major.