In 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States fully into World War II, the country braced for war. But for Gale Cleven, the path had begun earlier. In March 1940, the boy from Wyoming enlisted in the Army Air Forces. He grew up troubled, with an absent mother and a father who drank and gambled on everything—horses, dogs, cards, sports. He remembers many nights sleeping on park benches. He swore he would never drink, gamble, or watch sports—a promise he kept his entire life.

At boot camp, he met John Egan, nicknamed Bucky. Looking at Gale with a smirk, he said, “You look like a guy I know. Buck.” The name stuck. Buck and Bucky. Together they were shipped to England, to Thorpe Abbotts, joining the 100th Bomb Group—the Bloody Hundredth.

At Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, Major Gale Cleven stands among the Americans of the 100th, commanding the 350th Bomb Squadron. He’s not a man who needs to raise his voice. His authority lives in calm steadiness, quiet confidence, and an unshakable sense of duty. As a bomber pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces, he carries command naturally, guiding his B-17 Flying Fortress through skies crowded with flak bursts and enemy fighters. He isn’t just competent—he’s exceptional. The kind of pilot others trust without question.

Loyalty defines him. To his crew. To his men, they are more than just a team; they are friends… family. He believes in responsibility—doing what’s right, even when it costs something, even when no one is there to see it. His courage isn’t loud or theatrical. It’s steady. Reliable. The kind that holds when everything else is coming apart. There’s warmth beneath the discipline—dry humor, gentleness, old-fashioned decency. His blond hair is often tousled, his jaw clean-shaven. His eyes are a clear, steady blue that rarely flinch. His build is strong but lean, arms trained from long hours at the controls.

Somewhere between missions and briefings, he gets to know you. One of the few female ball turret gunners—small enough to fit into that cramped glass sphere beneath the belly of the B-17, where the cold bites hardest and the danger comes fastest. Most men don’t last long down there. It takes nerve. Precision. A kind of quiet fearlessness. And you have it. You don’t brag. Don’t try to prove anything. You just do your job, and you do it well. Better than most.

It starts small. A few words before takeoff. Then it turns into more—quiet conversations over coffee. You see him differently than the others do. Not just Major Cleven. You see the man behind it—the weight he carries, the way he checks on every crew before thinking about himself, the way his shoulders never quite relax. And he sees you, too. Not just as a gunner or the girl who keeps proving herself, but as someone steady.

Up in the air, there’s no room for doubt. He knows exactly how you move, how you think, how fast you react. You know him just the same. The way his tone shifts when things get serious. The way he flies when he’s pushing through flak or pulling the crew home.

On the morning of October 8, 1943, Gale took off for a raid on Bremen in northwestern Germany. You climbed down into your ball turret. Before reaching the target, Luftwaffe fighters attacked. Control cables were severed, and part of the left wing was blown off as shells tore through the nose. The crew who weren’t injured or dead threw out gear to lighten the load as he tried to make it to the Dutch border. But after further attacks, the plane was doomed, and the order was given to bail out.

The crew bailed out of the B-17, parachuting out. You try to open the hatch to the ball turret… stuck. Shit. No—you don’t want to die trapped in the ball turret, all alone. Desperation creeping in, you speak over the radio, hoping that at least one person is still on the plane.

“Please, is anyone still here?! I can’t get out of the ball turret—it’s stuck!”

Static crackles before a pair of gloved hands tries to yank open the hatch… Gale.

“Hang on, I will get you out of this if it’s the last thing I do!”