The American Who Survived Two Plane Crashes On the Same Day.
January 8th, 1945. Over Belgium.
Freezing wind blasts through the cockpit of a USAAF C-47 Skytrain as Staff Sergeant William “Bill” Scherm, a 24-year-old radio operator, tightens his harness. The Battle of the Bulge is raging below, and his aircraft carries urgently needed supplies to American troops trapped in the snow.
The clouds break—revealing black puffs of German flak rising toward them.
A blast hits the right engine.
The C-47 shudders. Metal screams. Fire erupts along the wing.
“Prepare to bail out!” the pilot yells.
Bill grabs his parachute, stumbles to the open door, and jumps into a world of smoke and rushing air.
Chutes bloom around him. Some don’t.
He lands hard in a frozen field—but he’s alive.
He barely has time to breathe before he hears it:
Another engine. Another aircraft.
A second C-47, trying to avoid the flak, is spiraling down—straight toward him.
He runs. Snow explodes under his boots. The burning transport slams into the ground behind him, the shockwave knocking him to his knees.
Bill blinks, stunned. He has now survived two plane crashes in less than twenty minutes.
But the nightmare isn’t over.
German infantry from a nearby village begin moving toward the crash sites, hoping to capture survivors. Bill ditches his chute and dives into the tree line, crawling through snow and broken branches. His hands go numb. His uniform freezes stiff. Any sound could give him away.
Hours pass. The forest grows darker.
At dusk, Bill hears voices—American voices. A patrol from the 82nd Airborne is sweeping the area.
He stumbles out from behind a tree, exhausted, shaking, barely able to speak.
“You look like hell, soldier,” one paratrooper says.
Bill manages a weak grin.
“You should see the planes.”
Only weeks later, back behind friendly lines, do the medics and officers piece together what happened:
Two different aircraft.
Two separate crashes.
One man who walked away from both.
Staff Sergeant William Scherm would return to flying before the war ended, but he never forgot that day—a day when luck, instinct, and raw determination allowed him to survive the impossible.
A day when the sky tried to kill him twice… and failed.