The War Lover in the process antagonising everyone. In 1943, Captain Buzz Rickson (Steve McQueen) is an arrogant pilot in command of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber nicknamed "The Body". While stationed in Britain during the Second World War, one of the bombing missions is aborted because clouds obscure all potential targets, but Rickson ignores the order to turn around and dives under the clouds. He completes the mission, at the cost of one of the bombers in his squadron and its entire crew. Rickson revels in the fighting and destruction; when he is assigned to drop propaganda leaflets on a later
RAF Bomber Command aircrew of World War II although 9,838 became prisoners of war. During World War II 156 aircrew taken prisoner of war successfully escaped from German prisoner of war camps in Western Europe and 1,975 airmen evaded capture being hidden by local resistance groups after being shot down in Western Europe. It is reported that more than half of the escapers and evaders were RAF Bomber Command airmen. A recent specialized study of airmen "evaders" shot down over Western Europe states that a post-war summary prepared by British Military Intelligence (MI9) recorded that 695 officers and 1,270 enlisted men had evaded capture; however, the study identified