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 St. Stanislaus commanding No. 207 Squadron RAF was aged 46 when he was killed in action on 23 March 1944 flying an Avro Lancaster, he was a veteran pilot who had served in World War I and had half of a hand shot off. Possibly the youngest member of aircrew to be killed serving with an operational bomber squadron is Flight Sergeant Edward James Wright Royal Canadian Air Force who was killed aboard an Avro Lancaster of No. 428 Squadron RCAF on 30 April 1945 apparently aged 16. A number of seventeen year olds were lost flying operationally with RAF