BALL TURRET GUNNER MAYNARD "SNUFFY" SMITH -
306TH BOMB GROUP ("THE REICH WRECKERS"
MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT

A 423rd Squadron Fortress piloted by 1/Lt Lewis Johnson, received several hits, starting fires in both the tail wheel housing and radio compartment. The ball turret gunner, S/Sgt Maynard "Snuffy" Smith on his first mission, emerged from his turret as its power-operated rotating mechanism had ceased to function. Seeing the two waist gunners and the radio operator, all veterans of action over Europe, take to their parachutes he might have been expected to follow. What motivated him to stay in the apparently doomed plane is not clear.

At the time, there was no way of telling if the men forward were preparing to jump, for the raging fire in the radio room isolated them. Wrapping a sweater around his face to filter air in the smoke, Smith fought the fire with a hand extinguisher. As the B-17 maintained formation, he assumed that there must be somebody in the cockpit. Momentarily turning attention to a minor fire in the rear, he found the tail gunner had not jumped with the other men and was lying badly wounded outside his compartment. After rendering first aid, Smith returned to fight the radio room fire.

Focke-Wulfs were now attacking the formation and he occasionally fired the waist guns between firefighting and keeping an eye on the wounded gunner. escaping oxygen fanned the flames to intense heat. Ammunition boxes stored near the radio began to explode and Smith heaved these through the gaping hole burnt in the fuselage side, or moved them away from the flames.

For 90 minutes he fought the fires. Having used the last extinguisher he tried smothering the flames with clothing and, as a final gesture, urinated on the smoldering wreckage. Nearing the English coast, Smith threw out all items of equipment he could in order to lessen the strain on the rear of the fuselage. Fire had so weakened the structure there was a real danger that it might break up on landing. Fortunately, the fuselage held when Johnson landed it safely at Predannack, near Land's End.

The fire had been so intense that some metal parts of the camera, radio and gun mounts had melted. A few weeks later, the slight, 32-year-old ball turret gunner received his country's highest decoration for this action. While the three crew members that bailed out were never recovered and presumed lost at sea, Smith's efforts on that day undoubtedly saved the lives of six others aboard his aircraft.[3]