More than 13,000 B-17s were built during the war, and the toll was heavy as they ran daylight bombing runs over enemy territory. "A third of them didn't come back," said Fowler, and each one that went down took 10 crew members. The bombers bristled with 13 50-caliber machine guns from the front, side, back and even the top to take out attacking fighters on the ground and in the air, leading to the name "Flying Fortress."

Roy Phillips' war was from the ground, looking up, although he operated the same 50-caliber machine guns whose replicas are posted in ports of the Madras Maiden. He and his unit came under heavy attack March 23, 1945, defending a pontoon bridge the 3rd Army built across Germany's Rhine River. He was struck in the abdomen with shrapnel and barely survived; three soldiers in his 12-man gun crew were killed, three were seriously wounded, and three others were slightly wounded.

"I remember those guys every day of my life," said Phillips, a Buffalo native who moved to Royalton when he married a country girl. "Most of my buddies are gone now."

Remembering the fallen is part of the mission of the Madras Maiden and the Liberty Foundation, said Jim Lawrence, another of the pilots. "We are here to remind people that freedom isn't free and to remind them of the sacrifices that were made," he said.