U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS Bradley Bunker   If Bradley Bunker’s World War II military service could be summarized in only two words, they would have to be “close calls.” Thirty-five missions as a navigator in a B-17 Flying Fortress put Bunker, of Franklin, in harm’s way on a regular basis as he directed the bomber and its combat crew of 10 from airstrips in England to heavily fortified targets in Germany. “We didn’t get many missions over France,” he recalls. “Those were too easy. We went after factories in the big industrial cities of Germany. It took three runs over Munich before we finally took out the Messerschmitt [military aircraft] plant there.”  During one such run, Bunker left his navigator’s station to look out a window. “I don’t know if it was a whole shell, or part of a shell, but it came through the bottom of the plane and took my navigator’s table and half of my log book with it. If I had been working on my log book, it would have taken my head off, too,” he said.  “It got pretty airy, and how that shell went all the way through the plane without hitting one of the cables, I still don’t know.” Like many other B-17s within the 8th Air Force’s 457th Bomb Group, Bunker’s bomber often returned to base riddled with reminders that Nazi anti-aircraft fire could be intense.  “On one mission we were shot up so bad that we began losing altitude, so we headed back to base,” he said. “There was so much damage that they wouldn’t let us land on the major runway because, if we cracked up, the rest of the group coming in behind us wouldn’t be able to land.”  The disabled plane was diverted instead to a nearby grass landing strip. “That grass strip was three miles long, and we were going so fast that we used every inch of it,” he said. “One engine did catch fire. As I was gathering up my navigation logs and maps the guys kept yelling at me: “Bunker, get out of there!’ They were sure the plane was going to explode. “I was the last one out, and when I came through the escape hatch, an English fire crew hit me with the foam they were pouring on the engine. That was cold, instant freeze.” Bunker, who will be 82 next week, remembers watching other B-17s in his squadron explode around him during bombing raids. “We flew a raid on Peenemunde [a German rocket center], where the Germans were manufacturing the atomic bomb, and they were ahead of us, too, until the 8th Air Force got a hold of them. “The flak at that target was so thick it looked like a gray blanket. The first three planes in our group got hit, and two went down. The plane right in front of us just disappeared.” Remarkably, none of Bunker’s crewmates was wounded or killed during the 35 missions they flew between May and November of 1944. That’s true good fortune: 8th Air Force flight crews had a higher percentage of casualties than any branch of the service during WWII. Of the 8th Air Force’s 135,000 combat crewmen, more than 26,000 were killed. Some 28,000 others were held as prisoners of war after their aircraft were shot down. Combined, that’s a loss ratio of 40 percent. “My bombardier was a big Irishman named Mike, and whenever we would go through a lot of flak, I’d get right behind him. He once had some flak come through the Plexiglas of his turret. It hit him, but he was wearing a chest protector, which probably saved him.” Bunker was a 22-year-old student at the University of Maine when he entered the service in 1942 on New Year’s Eve. His 100 hours of pilot training and his advanced navigational coursework took him to Florida, California, Texas and Oklahoma. Before being sent to his last stateside post in Oklahoma, he returned to Ellsworth in March of 1944, where he married his wife, Dorthea. Bunker declined the 8th Air Force’s offer of a promotion from first lieutenant to captain if he would stay on as a B-17 navigator beyond his required 35 missions.  “It would have meant that I’d stay on for the entire duration of the war,” he said. “They gave me an hour to think about it. When I went back to the barracks and saw all the fellas getting ready to go home, I decided to come home, too.”  Bunker used the G.I. Bill to complete his bachelor’s degree and to earn a master’s degree at the University of Maine. His first job out of college was teaching math and science at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill. Bunker’s 24-year teaching career would take the couple to Connecticut and New York before his retirement in 1970. The Bunkers now split their time between a winter home in Naples, Fla., and a summer home in Franklin built on family farmland overlooking George’s Pond. His 35 missions and his countless close calls earned Bunker a Distinguished Flying Cross. —Tom Walsh