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Earl Miller spends most of his days in his favorite room of his Cedarville home.
He sits surrounded by photos and framed newspaper articles from his days in the Air Force. Atop his television is a model of a B-17, the most famous bomber from World War II.
The model is not a toy or something to collect. It’s a reminder of a time when Miller should have died. This makes his Veterans Day celebrations since all the more special.
Miller is 95, but he remembers those war years with clarity: the missions, the men he flew with and the men who didn’t make it home. In the summer of 1943, Miller sat in the cockpit of a B-17 and piloted 25 missions out of England over German-occupied territory.
“The summer of ’43 is really significant because that’s when the air war in Europe was so desperately bad,” said Miller’s son, Chris Miller, a long-time Bible professor at Cedarville University. “When he went over, only about eight percent of the guys would come back. The average number of raids they lasted was only five.”
Earl Miller has no human explanation for why he was one of the few to survive the bombing raids of ’43.
“Hebrews 1:14 says that guardian angels are those who minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation,” he said, quoting a Bible scripture. “I figured that guardian angels took care of me. I didn’t get a scratch.”
Just getting his bomber to England was an adventure.
Earl Miller was one of 75 pilots in the 8th Air Force to take off from Presque Isle, Maine, stop to refuel in Newfoundland, then make the 10-12 hour flight to England at night.
It was May, the clouds were thick and an electrical storm ensued. The static electricity on the wings was a scary sight.
“It looked like it was on fire,” he said.
The other problem was ice.
“My air speed dropped to about 20 miles an hour, and I said, ‘What in the world caused that?’ ” Earl Miller said. “I had a flashlight and I flashed it out. And the flaps had creeped down a little bit and reduced the air speed. And with that air speed we would never make it over.”
His thoughts turned to having to ditch in the ocean into 10-foot waves. But he didn’t panic.
“I hit the button and the flaps came up,” he said. “But it wasn’t two minutes and they went back down again. I thought, ‘Boy, we’ll never make it over there.’ ”
But Earl Miller got good news from the engineer.
“He cranked up the flaps and then tied the crank so they couldn’t come down,” he said. “That’s the only way we got over there. That was my first experience.”
From an airfield outside of Bury St Edmunds, Earl Miller began to embark on daylight missions at a time when the air war in Europe was at its most costly to the Air Force.
The B-17s were escorted by P-51 fighters only as far as the other side of the English Channel. It wasn’t until 1944, when the tide of the war turned, that the P-51s were equipped with more fuel capacity to protect the bombers on missions that could last up to 12 hours. So Earl Miller’s B-17 would be swarmed by German fighters on the way to his target, run the gauntlet of anti-aircraft guns when he reached his target and face those fighters again on the way back to England.
“To get 25 raids was incredible,” Chris Miller said. “The odds were absolutely against him.”
Inside one of the frames on Earl Miller’s wall is a typed list of the missions he flew to such places as Hamburg, Regensburg, Brussels and Frankfurt. Each mission is dated beginning with June 29, 1943, to Le Mans, and finishing with Oct. 10, 1943, to Munster. His total combat time: 176 hours.
“My bombardier, he tells everybody I saved his life because of the decisions I had to make,” Earl Miller said. “About five or six different times I made the right decision, and we got back.”
His bombardier was Clayton Raynes, a retired pharmacist from Dayton who lives in Florida. Earl Miller was Raynes’ best man before they went to war. Raynes returned the favor when they got back.
In 2006, Raynes sent an email to him that included the following:
“I can’t recall the exact mission we were on but I think it was in north Germany when we had to dive to avoid attacking German fighters. We came out of the dive (air speed showing 500 mph) over the North Sea and our bomb load jettisoned going right through the closed bomb bay doors.
“Your masterful piloting brought us safely back to base. I have often thought of that mission and how you were in total command and purpose. The plane was in such dire condition that all your talents were employed to bring us in.
“I hope that the e-mail that comes with this is a reminder of some of the great maneuvers you made during our combat missions and to thank you again for bringing me home!”
Earl Miller knows how many planes were shot down and how many men died in the 8th Air Force: 4,500 bombers and 26,000 airmen, including some he knew well.
When he finished his 25th mission, he had the option of returning home. He was ready to marry Georgianna and start a family, so he went back to Indianapolis. He had a long career with the IRS and built his own home with his own hands. The Millers were married 66 years and moved to Cedarville in 1995. Georgianna died in 2009.
One of Earl Miller’s crew members was killed on a mission and another lost his legs and went home. Raynes reached No. 25 and went home a couple missions ahead of Miller. However, the rest of the men on his original 10-member crew still had one mission to fly. With a new pilot, their last mission ended tragically in death. The news was heartbreaking for him.
But Earl Miller lives on in his condo in Cedarville. He has won a bout with cancer, remembers the names of everyone he meets and voted last week.
“I’m amazed I lived this long,” he said. “I can’t believe it and don’t know why the Lord’s keeping me here.”
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