Roland Martin was born and raised as a California “Berkeley boy.” Being an excellent baker, his mother was the main supporter of the family. Martin helped out by working as a delivery boy on his bicycle. After graduating from Berkeley High School in 1941, he became a shipfitter helper with the aid of his sister who worked as a secretary at a Henry Kaiser Ship Yard. Although employed, Martin’s true desire was to join the Army Air Corps and fly planes.

In 1942, Martin was accepted into an aviation cadet class and began his training in Santa Ana, California. Unlike the 139 other graduates in his class who dreamed of being fighter pilots, Martin wanted a plane with as many engines as possible. Choosing to be a bomber pilot, Martin was assigned to a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and headed to England. Martin joined the 525th Bombardment Squadron, 379th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force flying the B-17 bomber, the “Iron Maiden.” The airmen’s days were filled with missions targeting industrial sites and marshalling yards with bomb drops in Germany. Martin’s day would start with a mission briefing, followed by taking off and assembling in formation before leaving England and setting a course for Germany. Flying past the coast of Holland, they’d begin to see German fighter planes approach. Fighter attacks and flak were the devils taking them down, and in Martin’s words “it was the luck of the draw whether you were one of the groups being under attack.”

The bomb groups lost planes on nearly every mission. The requirement that each crew member complete 25 missions before returning to the states meant that risking their lives was a daily routine. Due to the high loss rate many of the men flying wouldn’t buddy up to other crews. It was better, when a plane went down, not to have friends who wouldn’t be returning.

Martin completed nine missions and on each one, he witnessed planes plummeting from the sky after being shot down by enemy forces. He commented “we very quickly became fatalistic, if it was gonna happen it was gonna happen.” Having the tremendous responsibility of being the commanding officer, pilots earned the trust of the other nine men aboard the B-17. Being the pilot meant really muscling the airplane around, often a strenuous and mentally engrossing task. On one of those missions Martin recalled landing back in England needing his hands literally to be peeled from the controls they’d frozen to.

On the morning of Martin’s tenth mission, October 14, 1943, the briefing began. They were informed that another run at the Schweinfurt ball bearing factory would be taken; groans sounded around the room. Some of the men had been on the original disastrous run on August 17. Anticipating that the mission would be tough was nothing compared to how the mission actually played out—the high number of casualties sustained would mark this day in history as “Black Thursday.”

The Iron Maiden was downed by flak over the target.

Three bursts of flak exploded right in front of them at their altitude. They were hit, the starboard engines gone. After falling out of formation, another burst of flak hit the port engines; Martin could see gasoline streaming behind them from the shredded wing. The German Ju 88 that had come to see to their demise was shooting at them using tracers which he feared would ignite the gasoline. The Iron Maiden’s bombardier was still in the nose and firing at the oncoming plane while Martin and the copilot were trying to find a workable field in which to land. Training paid off as his sharpened focus found a field as their plane dropped rapidly toward the earth.

The Iron Maiden landed in Germany, in a field full of workers. Martin commented “any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.” The copilot and bombardier immediately took off. Sticking with him, the top turret gunner watched as Martin attempted to burn the airplane by utilizing his sidearm and the puddling gas from the plane.