After the death of his third wife, actress Carol Lombard, who participated in the Liberty bond tour - collecting money for military needs through military bonds, Clark Gable was trained on the B-17 Flying Fortress.
He made 5 sorties from the territory of Great Britain on May 4 to September 23, 1943, consisting of 351 bomber groups USAF, one of them to the territory of Germany.
In the first flight to the bombing of the factories of Ford and General Motors in Antwerp, Gable frostbitten fingers because of the use of non-deployed leather gloves to protect his hands from the cold. The fourth flight to the bombing of the plant of synthetic oils in Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr was the most dangerous flight for the actor - 25 of the 330 participating in it B-17 were shot down.
On November 5, 1943, Gable left Great Britain, returning to the United States with more than 50,000 feet of photographed 16-millimeter color film. In 1944, the movie "Fighting America", filmed by Gabe, was shown in theaters.
B-17 Colonel Hatcher and Major Blaylock, on which the actor made departures, was shot down in the province of Cognac, France, on December 31, 1943.