Into the Inferno: The Story of a B-17 Gunner over Nazi-Occupied Europe

Into the Inferno: The Story of a B-17 Gunner over Nazi-Occupied Europe by Bill Ibelle. Casemate Publishers, 2025, 183 pp.

They called themselves “The Forgotten 15th,” the men who flew and maintained Army Air Corps bombers and their fighter escorts from bases in Italy during World War II. “Forgotten” became part of the command lexicon because they believed their contributions were largely ignored by the media, the military brass, and the public back home.

And with good reason—whenever they picked up a copy of Stars and Stripes or turned on the radio, there were reports about rival Eighth Air Force (8 AF), which became the symbol of the American bomber campaign. Operating from bases in England, the Eighth Air Force was easily accessible to London-based journalists, who could visit American airbases, file their stories, and still make it back to The Savoy for cocktail hour. Well-known journalists, including Walter Cronkite, Andy Rooney, and Edward R. Murrow flew missions with the crews and provided glowing coverage. 

Meanwhile, few reporters made their way to the Italian bases that were home to the Fifteenth Air Force bomber groups, many in remote locations with few amenities. In winter, crews and support personnel had to slog through ankle-deep mud; in summer, the air was choked with dust. Personnel looking to see the local sites and lucky enough to get a pass usually had to walk—or hitchhike—to the nearest town, often miles away, where local thugs were an ever-present threat.   

In the air, 15 AF crews faced the same hazards as their 8 AF brethren. German fighters and antiaircraft gunners met the Italy-based raiders with the same ferocity as those attacking from England. Aircrews paid the price; from November 1943 to September 1945, the Fifteenth lost 3,364 aircraft and saw more than 21,000 personnel killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or missing in action. Ninety-four percent of those casualties came from bomber crews.

Over the years, the often-ignored war of the Fifteenth Air Force has produced several excellent histories and memoirs, including Barret Tillman’s Forgotten 15th (Regnery History, 2014) and Tom Faulkner and David Snead’s Flying with the 15th: a B-24 Pilot’s Missions from Italy During World War II (University of North Texas Press, 2018). Into the Inferno now joins the unit’s canon, telling the story of Bert Ibelle, a B-17 waist gunner assigned to the 483rd Bomb Group based in Sterparone, part of the Foggia Airfield Complex near the tip of Italy’s boot. Written by his son Robert “Bill” Ibelle, a veteran editor and journalist, Inferno is a personal account of air warfare as experienced by the 19-year-old Airman, one of six enlisted gunners charged with defending their aircraft from enemy fighter attacks.

Sergeant Ibelle was not a typical aerial gunner. In a war where many aircrew had only a high school education and some were middle-school dropouts, he was better educated—having completed his freshman year at Dartmouth before joining the Air Corps—and perhaps a bit more analytical, though that perception changes as the book unfolds. And he was more willing than most to maintain a record of his experiences. Bert kept a wartime diary, and after retiring from a distinguished career as a clinical psychologist, he surprised his son with a 280-page manuscript that expanded on his wartime recollections.

Bill’s reaction to his father’s more detailed reflections is summed up  a single word: “disappointed” (14). Hoping to find a window into his father’s soul through the formative experience of combat, Bill discovered that the manuscript focused on mundane matters, such as building a gas-powered stove to warm their tent, digging drainage ditches to prevent their canvas quarters from flooding, and eating the lousy food that sometimes triggered bouts of vomiting and diarrhea during combat missions.  

In person, Bert was equally taciturn, believing a story’s power comes from what is unsaid, allowing the true message to shine through implicitly. Readers may also deduce this deliberate compartmentalization was his mechanism for dealing with the horrors witnessed in combat.

Still, Inferno includes many details of interest to historians and casual readers. Bill has produced a compelling account of the air campaign’s last months for his father and other 15 AF crews. Along with Bert’s journal, mission records, and the manuscript, Bill draws upon letters exchanged with family members; infantryman Fran Brangheti, Bert’s best friend who served in the South Pacific; and Mary Jane Pierce, the auburn-haired high school senior that Bert set his sights on despite her love for another man. Inclusion of correspondence with Brangheti seems a bit puzzling—after all, this is a book about air combat—but it provides an interesting counterpoint to the life of an Airman.

The author commendably juggles these three narratives while maintaining focus on his father’s struggle to survive a combat tour. The Luftwaffe had been weakened by the time Bert began flying combat missions on Christmas Day 1944, but the skies above Italy, central Europe, and the Balkans remained a dangerous place. On a February mission to Augsburg, Germany, the waist gunner counted three B-17s going down during the bomb run, with only five parachutes appearing below them.

And the losses continued. Two months later, Bert was scheduled to fly a mission with a pilot who had been a high school classmate, but a friend in scheduling dropped him from the crew, saying “You’re not going.” The B-17 he was slated to fly on was shot down, and his former classmate was killed. Bert’s diary entry for 25 April 1945 reflected a combat veteran’s grim reality: “Alerted for a mission tomorrow. Scared as hell.” It was his only mention of fear in his writings.

The book also captures the dark humor of men at war. Slightly wounded on a mission, Bert was ordered by the flight surgeon to spend the night in the infirmary. The gunner told the doctor he had to attend the post-mission debriefing so he could report the sighting of secret German airfields observed during their flight. It was a ruse; in reality, Bert and his fellow crew members did not want to miss the hot coffee and donuts offered during debrief. The doctor acceded to their request, sending them to the debriefing in an ambulance with orders for the medics to return them to the hospital after their report was filed.

Such details make Inferno an enjoyable read, but ultimately, the reader is left wanting more. The book includes a photo that identifies the members of Bert’s B-17 crew. Unfortunately, little is learned about the other men, except for radio operator Frank Mullally, who served a tour in B-26s early in the war, then volunteered for a second combat stint. The other crew members remain largely in the background, despite the bonds shared among them.

It is also worth noting the crew photo does not include a bombardier; in an earlier chapter, Bill notes that his father almost died in training when the bombardier accidentally opened the bomb bay doors while Bert, balanced on a narrow catwalk, was activating bomb fuses. The bombardier was dropped from the crew, replaced with a more competent officer. But where is he in the crew photo? Likely, Bert’s crew operated without a bombardier later in the war, when designated gunners—dubbed toggliers—dropped the bomb load on cue from the lead aircraft, which still carried a bombardier. Was that the case in Bert’s unit? Did he function as a togglier? The reader is left wondering.

There are also a few minor editing errors and inaccuracies in the text. On a mission to Vienna in January 1945, Bert traded places with the ball turret gunner, to learn about other crew positions, allowing him to fill in if needed. Bill claims the mortality rate for men in the ball turret was “twice that of other crew members.” But an official 8 AF survey, conducted about six months before Bert entered combat, showed ball turret gunners had the lowest casualty rates.¹ Such information, readily accessible online, should have been referenced before making inaccurate claims.

Omissions in captioning also deserve a minor ding. Images showing two B-17s going down in flames—iconic photos from air combat over Europe—identify neither the aircraft nor their unit, even though both are readily available online. Savannah, Georgia, is also misspelled twice, in consecutive sentences. Never mind that it was the birthplace of the Eighth Air Force and an important transit point for bomber crews deploying to Europe.  

But such complaints are relatively minor. Into the Inferno is a solid, fast-paced read that details one young man’s war in a B-17 during the final months of World War II. Thanks to Bill and his father, the “Forgotten 15th” may now be remembered a bit more.

Major Gary Pounder, USAF, Retired