With a model of a B-17 bomber in his hands this past week, Sanford Walke floated back to the summer of 1944.
He is a young chief engineer on a B-17, flying the skies over Europe during World War II.
“We didn’t think of it as being as dangerous as it was,” Walke said.
That all changed when Walke’s plane was shot down over France.
“First, we went into a flat spin,” he said. “We lost radio controls and manual control of the plane. The stick was dead.”
Walke was the last man to jump out of the B-17. He says he almost didn’t make it.
“You don’t have time to be scared," Walke said. "You’re just doing what you’re supposed to do, trying to save your life.”
As he parachuted to the ground below German guns opened fire.
“I was looking right down the barrel of a machine gun,” he said.
Unbelievably, he was never hit. But he was captued and ended up a prisoner of war for months.
At one point, he and his fellow prisoners were forced to march 530 miles. Walke says he survived by eating snow.
“They got me starved down to 80 pounds,” Walke said.
He was always looking for a chance to escape and finally did. Three days later, he was rescued by British tanks.
“My wife says angels had a shield around me and protected me,” he said.
Walke will turn 90 years old this July. He says he was incredibly lucky to make it out of world war two alive.