75: Legend of the Phantom Fortress | The Plane that Flew and Landed Itself
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

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World War II has countless stories of bravery, sacrifice, camaraderie, and heroism. But the war also has a lot of mysteries, many of them still unsolved, like the legend of the Phantom Fortress, a B-17 bomber that returned from a mission with no crew aboard and somehow landed itself. Let's find out why.

The first thing they heard was the distant roar of the plane's engines. I can hear those fighter planes. And I can hear those fighter planes. Why? You too, Sunday, bloody Sunday. I know the song. Can you at least let me get into the story before- Sunday, bloody Sunday. Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead with your thing. Thank you. But I'm right here if you need me.

The first thing they heard was the distant roar of the plane's engines. On November 23, 1944, the ground crew at the Royal Air Force Base in Kortenberg, Belgium, looked

Look to the sky. If the sound wasn't a giveaway, the distinctive silhouette was. This was a B-17, a massive 35,000 pound U.S. Army bomber called the Flying Fortress. And this fortress was headed right for them rapidly. There was no landing schedule that day, so the ground personnel assumed this was an emergency. It was coming in at very high speed, flying erratically and had its landing gear down. And as the bomber got closer, the soldiers started to panic.

The plane was dropping so fast that it looked like 18 tons of steel, fuel and explosives were going to crash right into them. The soldiers hit the deck as the bomber barely cleared the anti-aircraft guns. Then they felt the earth shake as the B-17 crashed into the ground. Still moving at high speed, the plane tore through a field. The landing was so violent

that pieces of propeller broke off and shot through the air. The wings were crushed on impact. Still intact, but badly damaged, the plane finally dragged to a stop. Three out of its four engines were still running, and the men on the ground waited, expecting the bomber's crew, or at least some of the crew, to emerge. They didn't. Soldiers on the ground waited nervously for 15 minutes while the plane's engines continued to run.

Nobody came out. At this point, the men on the ground were getting suspicious. They were worried this was a trap. Finally, after 20 minutes of watching and waiting, Major John Crisp slowly approached the plane. Major Crisp drew his sidearm, opened the hatch, and climbed in. He expected to see men dead or dying, but the plane was completely empty. He wrote down what he found. We now made a thorough search, and our most remarkable find in the fuselage was

was about a dozen parachutes neatly wrapped and ready for clipping on. This made the whereabouts of the crew even more mysterious. Back on the navigator's desk,

was the code book giving the colors and letters of the day for identification purposes. Various fur-lined flying jackets lay in the fuselage together with a few bars of chocolate, partly consumed in some cases. Aside from what was sustained from the hard landing, the plane had no damage. The parachutes were still there, so the crew couldn't have bailed out. Food was left half eaten. It was like they just vanished.

Major Crisp shut down the engines and looked for signs, trying to piece together what happened. He found the plane's logbook. The final entry ominously read, Bad Flack. Bad Flack. Major Crisp climbed out of the plane and signaled to his men that it was all clear. There was nobody on board. The soldiers asked, how could this be? The Major shrugged and said, the plane landed itself.

So now there are two big questions. First, what happened to the men on board? And second, how did this plane fly, maneuver and land without them? The press called the plane the Phantom Fortress and the Ghost Ship. And the story was published in Stars and Stripes and became an instant legend.

Investigators identified the B-17 as part of the 91st Bomber Group out of East Anglia, England. The base had records that the plane had taken off with a full crew. There was plenty of evidence that they were on board, but now they were nowhere to be found. Now that the army had the names of the men, calls went out to every base and post in the area. After a few days, all 10 men were found in perfect health. They were at a nearby air base in Belgium. Lieutenant Harold R. DeBolt was the pilot and explained what happened.

His B-17 was flying a mission over Merseburg, Germany, bombing oil refineries. And Merseburg dreaded Merseburg, as it came to be known, had twice as many anti-aircraft guns as Berlin. Almost 160 B-17s were shot down over the city, so these were dangerous skies.

As the bomber group climbed to 28,000 feet to begin its run, DeBolt noticed he had a malfunction in one of his engines and couldn't make it to bombing altitude. Then another malfunction forced the plane off course. Now drifting away from its bomber group, DeBolt's B-17 was vulnerable. The bomber drifted into German anti-aircraft fire and was taking a lot of damage, both from the ground and from fighters in the air. The plane quickly filled up with smoke and fire.

DeBolt attempted to drop his ordnance, but the bomb rack was jammed. Then the plane took another hit on its bomb bay door. DeBolt said it was a miracle that every bomb on board didn't explode. Another engine took so much damage from anti-aircraft fire that it practically sheared off from the plane. The weather was bad and with only two working engines, DeBolt pulled out and turned back to England. The bomber, badly damaged, kept losing altitude.

De Boelt knew they were in trouble. He ordered the crew to throw everything overboard, hoping to lighten the plane. It didn't help. It kept falling. At this point, it was clear that the bomber was not going to make it all the way across the English Channel, not with only two engines. So De Boelt ordered the crew to ditch, and the men parachuted safely behind Allied lines in Belgium. The last thing he saw was his bomber flying into heavy fog. He figured it would crash a few minutes later. It didn't. De

De Bolt's plane continued to fly for miles and finally made a rough but relatively clean landing at an Allied airfield in Belgium. Investigators were now left with a puzzle. De Bolt said he lost two engines and the plane was severely damaged.

But eyewitnesses like Major Crisp said three engines were working and the plane had no damage at all and all parachutes were accounted for. Investigators said they probably had extra parachutes on board and the third engine could have come back on by itself. And the plane landing in an allied airfield was just a coincidence. It was good luck.

This explanation was enough to satisfy investigators, and the case was closed. That's the report. Eyewitnesses didn't buy it either. They felt that something supernatural had taken place, and the legend of the Phantom Fortress was born.

I had never heard of the Phantom Fortress before. This topic, like most topics I cover, was submitted by you. So if there's a story you'd like to see and see us get to the bottom of, go to the Y-Files dot com slash tips. I can't do every story, but I read every message. So the Phantom Fortress, is it true? Yes and no. This legend is actually two stories that got mixed together.

In 1943, a B-17 crashed near the home of a young boy named John Gell in England. And Gell and his family saw the bomber flying toward their village, engines sputtering. And that plane crashed into an outcropping of trees near the boy's home.

When John Gale's father rushed to help the crew, he found nobody on board. And about 40 years later, John Gale was relaying the story that he saw a bomber maneuvering with its squadron flying in formation, but it eventually crashed. And when they searched the plane, it was empty. They later learned that the crew had parachuted behind enemy lines, fought their way out of Germany and were back in another B-17 soon after. This didn't happen.

Most likely, John Gell heard the story of the Phantom Fortress and pulled some of the details into his story. And then, as every good storyteller does, added his own flair. And tell the story enough times, your brain can actually form memories to reinforce that story. The B-17 that crashed near Gell's home was actually the Kat-9 tails. The plane took a lot of damage over Germany, but made it back across the channel. Quickly running out of fuel, the crew bailed out over John Gell's village.

And in 1944, a British anti-aircraft crew saw a B-17 make a hard landing in a nearby field. One of the plane's wings hit first, causing it to spin around. And Major John Crisp was indeed the officer who searched the plane and found it empty. This was the bomber flown by DeBolt's crew. Yeah, but

How does a plane land itself? Well, before jumping out, DeBolt had engaged the autopilot, which is protocol when ditching. The plane was moving slowly and descending, and the autopilot kept it level. It finally came down in an open field near an anti-aircraft installation, but not on an airbase.

It could have easily crashed in the sea, in the woods, or in a village like the other B-17. And this type of thing happened all the time, but this plane happened to come down in a field. The other aspects of the story, like the half-eaten chocolate bars and the parachutes being intact, were not so important.

were added to the story later. In legends like Roanoke Island or The Mary Celeste, tables are set for dinner and food is left half-eaten. This really ups the creepy factor, so I can understand why these details were eventually added. Besides, nobody eats half a chocolate bar. That's true.

We know what really happened because there are detailed records of these planes, their crews, and their missions. And I'll link to them below if you want to learn more. The legend of the Phantom Fortress, while a great ghost story, is just a story. But let's be honest, even without the supernatural aspect, what actually happened, that a massive B-17 landed gently on its own, is still amazing. And because it's true, I think it makes the story better.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do me a favor and like, subscribe, comment, and share. I know I sound like a broken record, but it really helps the channel. And special thanks to our generous patrons who make this channel possible. That's going to do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated.