Andy Rooney was a war correspondent and journalist for the Stars and Stripes, in February 1943 he was selected as one of eight journalists to accompany the 8th Air Force flying bombing missions over Germany. After a week's extensive training, Rooney joined a bomber crew flying over Wilhelmshaven on 26 February 1943, his aircraft was hit by flak, but he believed this gave him the best story of all the journalists, he recalled the mission:



'I got in my bomber and I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? I'm scared to death. I mean, I don't have to risk my life" — except that I felt so bad for all the men who did have to risk their lives all those times that it just seemed like it was the honest thing to do. I remember we had these heavy flak jackets. A B-17 is not like a modern airliner. Wires and everything were all over, and getting through the bomb bay to the back — which would be the cabin in a passenger plane now — was very difficult. If you had a parachute on, it was tough to get past all the wires without getting snagged on everything. So I didn't wear my flak jacket. I stood on it. I had this feeling that I didn't want to be hit from underneath, but of course what happened was the flak exploded in the air around you and didn't necessarily come from below.



If there was flak before you got to the target, the pilot could take evasive action. But once the bombsight zeroed in on the target, you couldn't take any evasive action or the bombs would not go where they were designed to go. That plane was a perfect target for the gunners from underneath, and that was the frightening part of it — you just had to sit there.



There were seven of us [reporters] who actually went, and I was the youngest, but I ended up with the best story because my bomber was hit. I was up in the nose of the plane, and a shell came in and took a small piece of the Plexiglas nose off. The bombardier, who was in front of me, panicked and tried to stuff something in the hole. At seventeen or eighteen thousand feet, that air coming in is subzero, and he took his gloves off. His hands froze and it was terrible. I looked across at the little desk that the navigator used. His oxygen tube had been pierced and he lost his oxygen, and at eighteen thousand feet he collapsed. So I got to the pilot intercom and I asked him what to do. He said, "Well, we have emergency air in oxygen bottles up behind me. Take some deep breaths and come back up behind me and get the oxygen bottle; bring it back down and hook him up to that." Well I didn't know how to do any of this and here I was, with somebody's life at stake, and I didn't know how long you lasted once you took your oxygen mask off. But I took some deep breaths, I took my oxygen mask off, and went through this alleyway up behind the pilot. There I got an oxygen bottle and hooked up the navigator, who was a much more experienced flyer than the bombardier. He regained consciousness and got the bombardier quieted down. So I had by far the best story to tell of all the correspondents who went out that day.'



Whilst Rooney's aircraft only suffered flak damage another journalist Robert Post was killed when his aircraft exploded in mid-air, it was deemed too dangerous for journalists to fly further missions with the 8th Air Force but Rooney accompanied a B-26 Marauder crew on D-Day. He was also one of the first journalists to visit concentration camps and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal for his reporting throughout the Second World War.



In 1949 Rooney joined CBS where he enjoyed a long career as a writer, radio and TV reporter on public affairs, he became known for broadcasting news specials and television essays, such as his own memoirs of the Second World War. He retired from CBS on 4 October 2011, and died a month later