As he plunged toward the unforgiving earth, Army Air Forces Sgt. James Raley was stuck. It was January 1944, and the tail section of the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber nicknamed “Skippy” where Raley was positioned as a tail gunner had been severed from the rest of the aircraft in a midair collision. Spiraling from an altitude of more than 19,000 feet with no parachute strapped to his back, he had no means of escape. "If I were going to die, I wanted to get it over with," Raley recounted in a first-