John Armbruster, author of "Tailspin" to present at June Chapter Meeting

The public is invited to our regular monthly chapter meeting on June 3 at the Kelch Aviation Museum, featuring author John Armbruster, discussing his new book, Tailspin; "The true story of a World War II tailgunner who survived a four-mile fall without a parachute, only to land in German hands."

In November 1943, in the skies over Nazi Germany, a wounded American tail gunner, Gene Moran, lay in the severed tail of his Flying Fortress bomber. The mangled wreckage plunged four miles toward German soil. His parachute shredded by enemy fire, Gene awaited the inevitable.

The cartwheeling tail section slammed into a forest and dumped Gene onto the cold ground. He was alive! Gene fell four miles without a parachute and survived. But his ordeal had just begun. In the next seventeen months, Gene would endure some of the worst episodes of the American prisoner of war experience in occupied Europe, including the infamous "Hell Ship" and European Death March.

For more than sixty years, Gene said little about one of the most extraordinary stories of World War II until he met the author, John Armbruster. John, a close friend of the Moran family, initially refused to write Gene's story. Twenty years removed from a journalism degree and writing high school basketball stories for newspapers, John couldn't imagine taking on such significant work. But the author agreed to the project when one of Gene's daughters told John, "He'll do it, but only if you write it." The journey of telling the story becomes a story itself.

Tailspin ​chronicles Gene's unbelievable World War II survival saga. It will also show an elderly man finally coming to terms with the cruelties of a war that would haunt his entire life.

You may also like the following events from Brodhead Airport - EAA Chapter 431:

• Next month, 14th June, 09:00 am, Young Eagles Day in Brodhead

Also check out other Arts events in Brodhead, Literary Art events in Brodhead, Meetups in Brodhead.