Coming Home Damaged

A B-17 Flying Fortress comes in low over an English airfield at the end of a daylight raid, one engine feathered and trailing smoke, its tail fin shot through. The triangle-A marking belongs to the 91st Bomb Group, which flew from Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire from 1942 to the end of the war.

The bombers of the Eighth Air Force went out in the morning and were due back by mid-afternoon. Ground crews stood at the edge of the field and counted them in — a ritual the men called sweating them out. A crew that made it home with a wrecked airplane was the good outcome. The other outcome was an empty hardstand.

The 91st lost more B-17s than any other group in the Eighth Air Force. It also flew the Memphis Belle.

The ground crew is painted from behind, in silhouette, so the viewer stands with them. One man has his hand up to shade his eyes. The bomber fills the upper right, gear down, nose slightly high, the ragged tail catching the last light — a plane that should not be flying and is. Wet grass throws the sunset back up at it. The sky is the real subject: heavy cloud pressing down, a band of gold underneath, and the airplane sliding into it.