SAVOY - When the passengers boarding the B-17 Flying Fortress were asked who would volunteer to sit up in the cockpit, Jimmy Rue quickly spoke up.

After all, it was the dream of becoming a pilot and flying high over the fields of Central Illinois and Europe that caused the 18-year-old to volunteer for the Army Air Corps after he received his draft notice in 1943.

Rue, 83, was disqualified from becoming a pilot because of a knee injury suffered during basic training. Instead, he was tucked into the other end of a B-17 as a tail gunner during 35 missions over Germany during World War II.

Thursday afternoon, Rue, a Marshall resident and longtime pastor of nearby Oliver Church of Christ, returned to the air in a restored B-17 bomber, a four-engine plane with a reputation for incredible resilience in surviving enemy attacks.

"I love that plane," Rue said as he walked onto the apron at Willard Airport shortly before boarding. "Isn't it gorgeous? Ours looked just like this."

Rue was invited by the Experimental Aircraft Association to take a free ride on its B-17, which is touring the nation as part of its "Salute to Veterans" tour. The plane, built in 1945, will be available at Willard for ground tours and flights until Sunday.

Rue recalled that he was selected to serve as a tail gunner partly because he was compact enough to fit into the compartment at the bottom of the tail section, as a 5-foot, 10-inch, 125-pound young man.

Crouching beneath the gleaming silver plane nearly 64 years after his first mission, Rue pointed out the tail gunner's hatch, which he had been instructed to use if he had to bail out.

"Fortunately, I never had to use that," said Rue, a warm, cheerful man who has been organizing reunions with his crew members in recent years.

Considering that Rue, a member of the Eighth Air Force, routinely flew over enemy airfields, factories and oil refineries that were heavily guarded by German anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes, it was amazing he and his eight fellow crew members survived. The Eighth Air Force, flying out of England, suffered half the casualties of the Army Air Corps, with more than 26,000 killed in action.

For Rue, who grew up on a farm in Cumberland County, it was an incident during his second mission that gave him the resolve to kill the enemy, despite his mixed feelings about taking the lives of others.

A fellow airman, Richard Anthony, who had served as a ball turret gunner on Rue's plane on the previous mission, was aboard a nearby plane. While Rue was just starting his five months of air combat, this was to be Anthony's final flight. Anthony was 19 years old or so.

"During that mission, I found out what combat was all about," Rue said. "We lost a number of planes that day to enemy fire."

During the successful raid on an oil refinery at Merkweiler, Rue's plane was hit, and the No. 4 engine was spewing smoke and had to be shut off. Three fighters attacked from behind. Rue, sitting on a little tricycle seat, fired his twin 50-caliber machine guns.

"We got two of them," Rue said. "The other one left."

Anthony's plane was shot down.

"I saw him bail out of his portion of the plane," Rue recalled. "Shortly after he opened his chute, German fighters went after him. They attacked him." Rue broke down as he recalled the death of the young man. "It's an event I've remembered all these years."

Rue, a member of the 92nd Bombardment Group, 325th Squadron, experienced his own close call with death during his eighth mission, a raid on a Luftwaffe base in Frankfurt.

"On the way back, a piece of flak went through my steel helmet and leather helmet," Rue said. "It was a glancing blow that cut through the back of my scalp. It hit the bone of the skull but didn't fracture it. It left a wound enough. Head wounds bled profusely. I thought I'd had it."

When the pilot ordered him to come out of the tail to a safer spot, he rejected the order, remaining at his post.

"Our ship was badly banged up, but like the good fort it is, it brought us back home," Rue said. "On 35 missions, at least half the time we came back with battle damage. After one flight, they replaced parts of two wings and a tail section."

When he returned safely to base on that eighth mission, with 136 holes in the plane, Rue refused treatment to remain with his crew.

Rue said he believes God protected him, which later led him to a career in ministry.

Because he never received regular medical treatment for his head wound, Rue did not receive a Purple Heart until 2006, after his former crew lobbied for it.

Missions were flown at 28,000 to 30,000 feet, about five to six miles high, with temperatures of 50 degrees below zero in the unheated aircraft. Crew members wore heated suits, hoping and praying that the electric lines were not cut by shrapnel.

"Otherwise, you would sit there mighty cold," he said.

But on a balmy day, Rue wore a short-sleeved shirt for his flight over Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding countryside.

Afterward, he was beaming as he greeted his wife of nearly 59 years, Kathy, who stayed on the ground.

"I enjoyed it," Rue said. "When you feel that plane taking off and going down the runway, it brings back all those same feelings, but it got off the ground much easier. When it was heavily loaded with bombs, sometimes it was hard to get off the ground."

Huey Freeman can be reached at hfreeman@herald-review.com or 421-6985.