Note: The following article was released for general publication by the 390th Bomb Group and published in the overseas Stars and Stripes newspaper. The title of the article was Hilarity in Skippy I Ends in Tragedy in Skippy II. 

In the first episode, Al Selvideo, in Skippy I, saved the life of the ball turret gunner, Joseph Collector. The crew members in the back of the plane began bailing out, after the pilot, Lt. Sutters, gave the order to abandon ship, but whoever went out first failed to jettison the escape hatch door. When Collector left the ship, his parachute harness got hung up on the handle of the door. Two crewmen leaped over him, while he was dangling in the slipstream outside the Fortress. The last one to jump was Selvideo but, before he left, he released the hapless Collector. 

The Stars and Stripes newspaper article
AN EIGHTH AAF BOMBER STATION, England.  Nazi flak and sudden death have written a tragic sequel to one of the War's wackiest yarns--that of the Eighth AAF Flying Fortress crew that bailed out of its flaming ship, Skippy, over Britain, a few weeks ago, and ended up with a collection of cockeyed experiences, ranging from the tail gunner's "heavenly" awakening, in the arms of a pretty English Land Army girl kissing him, to the co-pilot's wining and dining with an Air Vice Marshall of the RAF and the Mayor of Ipswich. 

The bail-out crew, with several replacements for men injured in an earlier mishap, were flying their new ship, Skippy II, against Nazi Messerschmitt planes at Augsberg, Germany.  Flak over the target was like a summer hailstorm. Suddenly, the pilot, First Lt. Thomas Sutters, 25, of 3070 34th Street, Astoria, NY, doubled up, clutching his right leg. 

"He'd been hit in the thigh," the co-pilot, Second Lieutenant Paul Cooper, 24, of 611 Woodland Avenue, Emporium, PA, recounted later. 

"I took controls, and he reached for a tourniquet but, before he could get it on, he fainted. The top turret gunner then lifted him from his seat and dragged him a few feet to the alleyway leading to the nose compartment. 

The top turret gunner, S/Sgt. Otto Fugett, 25, of 202 Front Street, Orange, Texas, worked feverishly over his wounded pilot, applying a tourniquet and sulfa powder. But not for long. Skippy II had let go her bombs on the target; then another flak burst caught her, flush amidship from below. In the alleyway, lay Sutters and Fugett, both frightfully wounded--Sutters for the second time.  The navigator, Second Lt. Alfred Gertler, 21, of 1343 East 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY, told how, at first, he didn't realize what had happened. 

"I looked back and saw Fugett, trying to tourniquet a leg. He was using a piece of rag that kept breaking every time he tied it. I thought it was the pilot's leg. Then I saw it was his own. 

The radio operator, S/Sgt. Albert Selvideo, 20, of 148 Corning Road, Norwich, CT, summoned by the navigator to tend the wounded men, threaded his way up the bomb bay catwalk to the alleyway. 

"I gave them both morphine," he said. "Fugett's left foot was almost off, just hanging by a shred of flesh. He asked me to cut it off but, instead, I propped it up so it wouldn't hang down and hurt him so. Then I fixed his tourniquet and applied sulfa powder." 

Army doctors later stated that the foot might miraculously be saved. It wasn't. 

"The pilot was in even worse shape," Selvideo continued. "The second flak burst had laid open his stomach. I used sulfa; then stuffed in as much bandage as I could, first cutting away the clothing. Then I loosened his leg tourniquet for a little while. He asked me if his leg was off." 

The Norwich flyer stayed with his patients an hour and a half, applying morphine, as needed, and periodically loosening their tourniquets. When he finally returned to his post, Gertler took his place. The ship's oxygen was almost exhausted and, for nearly an hour, until the ship reached the English Channel and could descend from high altitude, the eight uninjured men of the crew went virtually without oxygen, so that Sutters and Fugett could have what was left. But the former's wounds were mortal. He died just before the landing. 

The landing itself was a close call for all aboard. Another ship, bearing wounded, cut in on the approach. Caught in the prop wash, at low speed, Skippy II escaped crashing only through the skill of Lt. Cooper, alone at the controls. 

Other members of the crew included S/Sgt. Joseph Collector, 20, ball turret gunner, of 737 Shirley Avenue, Norfolk, VA; S/Sgt. Bernard J. Jensen, 21, tail gunner, of 6857 Ben Avenue, North Hollywood, CA;  S/Sgt. Charles Ell, 25, gunner-bombardier, of 36 Madison Avenue, Rockville Centre, NY; and Sgt. Joseph M. Malone, 22, right waist gunner, of 200 Exchange Street, Lawrence, MA.

Ell, Altham and Malone, as well as Gertler, the navigator, have all been added to the crew since its bail-out episode. In the latter, it was Selvideo who landed on a railroad track, scrambling to safety with the help of an elderly Britisher, as a train came around the bend. The train was bearing down on Selvideo, when the man, who was working in his victory garden, lowered a ladder and rescued the Sergeant. 

Fugett got hung up on a quarry ledge, dangling 150 feet above the ground by his shroud lines before, somehow, dropping to the ground with only a severely sprained ankle. 

Collector landed, waist deep, in a peat marsh, unable to extricate himself, until rescued by some home guard British soldiers. 

Jensen was the lucky boy, who was kissed back to consciousness by a pretty British Land Army lass. On the Augsberg mission, he was kissed again--by flak--but his luck still held, as it bounced harmlessly off his steel helmet. 

Lt. Sutters, killed in action on the Augsberg flight, had distinguished himself in the bail-out incident by remaining at the controls of his blazing ship, long after his crew had jumped to safety, mindful only of possible injury to others when the ship crashed. He flew it to the Channel coast, before parachuting himself. Returning from an earlier mission against Nazi targets in Paris, last December, he had successfully belly-landed his ship, after flak damage had jammed the wheels. 

Postscript:  I never got to know any of the officers of Sutters' crew, but the six enlisted men were all in the same Nissan hut with my crew. 

In 1996, while attending the 390th Bomb Group reunion in Phoenix, I asked some friends at my table what had happened to Lt. Sutters' crew. Someone said, "Why don't you ask Paul Cooper, there; he was Sutters' co-pilot?" 

So, after so many years, I got to meet a man whose actions I so admired. We talked for over an hour, and I brought him up to date on Selvideo and Collector, with whom I remained in touch after the war.

A short time ago, I read in the Bomb Group newsletter that Cooper had died in his home in California.

Cooper stated to me that the newspaper had been wrong when it said there was a Skippy II. He and his crew were never assigned another ship of their own. They simply flew whatever ships were available to them until they completed their tour of duty.