Robert F Pipes

The Playboy Crew 1943-1944: Memoirs of World War II: The Men of B-24 Liberator 41-29399 Robert F Pipes

The Playboy took a terrible beating that day...

The Luftwaffe fighter planes and heavy cannon fire had really done a number on the hardy B-24 Liberator, leaving it about sixty percent plane and forty percent holes. Fortunately, nine of the ten Playboy crew members were able to bail out. But then the real trouble started.

Years later, one of these brave air crew members shares his story and relives the year he spent narrowly evading the Germans in occupied Holland-hiding in secret compartments and haymows in the country; aiding the Dutch Underground members in disrupting the enemy forces, all while trying to get to Allied lines with the help of the Dutch Resistance Force.

"Our World War II experiences uprooted us from our homes and reshaped us from whatever we had formerly been. Ten specialists were formed into a fighting team-dubbed The Playboy Crew-whose lives, to a great extent, depended on one another. That we functioned as well as we did is a credit not only to our training but to the type of people we were and to those who led us."