10 Good Men Documentary Tells Stories of WWII B-17 Veterans

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress carried a crew of 10 into some of the most dangerous American bombing missions of World War II. More than 80 years later, filmmaker Trent “TJ” Jones found 10 men who had been there to tell its story.

That became the organizing idea behind 10 Good Men, a 90-minute documentary built around the firsthand accounts of 10 of the last remaining World War II veterans who flew aboard B-17s in combat over Europe. Together, the pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners amount to the equivalent of one complete Flying Fortress crew.

For Jones, however, getting to 10 veterans was part of a much larger race against time.

Jones, who runs the aviation history channel TJ3 History, began interviewing veterans after filming World War II dive-bomber gunner Dick Morales in late 2022. That video brought more veterans and families his way. Over roughly three years, Jones said, his team interviewed about 50 veterans from World War II and other conflicts.

Eventually, he faced a problem. Producing each veteran’s individual story could take months, while the men he wanted to interview were already approaching or passing 100 years old.

“We could make the videos later, but we couldn’t go get their interviews later,” Jones told Military.com. “They’re not going to be here.”

The urgency is increasingly measurable.

The Department of Veterans Affairs projected that about 40,127 American World War II veterans would still be living as of Sept. 30, 2026, down from nearly 59,000 only a year earlier.

One B-17 Crew, 80 Years Later

Jones initially had roughly a dozen B-17 veteran interviews. When he realized 10 would make the final documentary, the number gave the film its structure and, eventually, its name.

A B-17G typically carried 10 men. Later models carried as many as 13 .50-caliber machine guns, with crew members spread from the aircraft’s nose and cockpit to its ball, waist and tail gun positions. The Smithsonian estimates 4,754 B-17s were lost or written off during operations from a total production run of 12,731 aircraft.

Jones said his interviews included veterans from nearly every major position aboard the bomber, including pilots, navigators, bombardiers and several types of gunners. He came across the title while reading a wartime loss report.

A destroyed B-17 meant the loss of fuel, ammunition and an expensive aircraft, Jones said. But the phrase that stuck with him was what the loss could mean for the people inside it: “Ten good men are lost with it.”

The film follows those men across the changing air war from 1942 through 1945, from the punishing early daylight raids to the arrival of long-range fighter escorts and the final months of the European campaign.

It uses restored American and German archival footage, including material from the National Archives, Imperial War Museum and German Federal Archives.

They Were Young Enough to Be Teenagers Still

Some of the most striking moments come from how young the airmen were when they first encountered combat.

Walter Ram, a radio operator with the 94th Bomb Group, flew six combat missions before his B-17 was shot down over Kiel, Germany, on June 13, 1943. He became a prisoner of war and was eventually held at Stalag Luft 17B.

Jones said Ram had lied about his age before entering the service and was likely only about 17 when he arrived in the European theater.

In the film, Ram recalls seeing a damaged bomber return before he had flown his own combat mission. The aircraft was riddled with holes and a crew member was carried away on a stretcher.

“They haven’t even flown a combat mission yet,” Jones said. “It’s insane to even think about.” Other stories never made the 90-minute cut.

Jones recalled interviewing 390th Bomb Group pilot Richard Bushong, who became ill shortly before his crew was scheduled to fly.

When Bushong returned from the hospital, he found the other mattresses in his hut rolled up. The crew he had trained with had flown without him and been shot down. Bushong went on to fly 28 B-17 combat missions over Europe.

For Jones, those details were precisely what he wanted to preserve.

There are already histories of B-17 specifications, bombing missions and unit movements. During his interviews, he said he deliberately pushed veterans toward the details that rarely appear in official records. What an attacking fighter looked like from inside the bomber, what being hit sounded like, what went through an airman’s mind before jumping from a crippled aircraft.

“I wanted to know their personal stories that don’t get covered,” Jones said.

That philosophy also shaped the film’s imagery. 10 Good Men relies on genuine archival footage rather than artificially generated combat scenes, a decision Jones said was important because fabricated historical imagery can become detached from its origins and eventually be mistaken for evidence.

‘If You Don’t Record It, Those Are Gone’

10 Good Men began limited theatrical screenings earlier this year and is scheduled for a wider digital release on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2026, through Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. An Apple TV listing for the documentary is already live, and physical copies are also scheduled to ship on Veterans Day.

Jones is also scheduled to attend a Veterans Day screening at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, where the museum says B-17 veteran Dick Nelms, one of the men featured in the documentary, is a longtime volunteer.

Several of the veterans whose interviews helped build the documentary have already died since they were filmed, making the recordings increasingly difficult to separate from the act of preserving history itself.

Jones said the lesson extends beyond military history.

If a parent, grandparent or other relative has stories worth keeping, he said, record them, whether they involve combat, family recipes, sports or simply the story of how a house was built.

“If you don’t record it, those are gone,” Jones said. “That’s how stories get passed down.”