This sounded like there had to be more to it but found this [1] and it makes it even weirder.

> The parachutes were still onboard and no indication of gunfire or blood caused by hostile attacks were seen on the plane.

[1] https://worldwarwings.com/still-unsolved-story-of-b-17-landi...

A Quora answer[1] suggests that the "parachutes" found were just the empty packs, and the crew was found safe.

That the plane landed intact is pretty cool though!

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-crew-of-the-B-17-...

FTA: "The Second World War II"...

I think there were experiments with RC B17s. I wonder if this was one and they chose to emergency land it but had to keep it a secret from the Belgian airfield crew.

When my grandpa was navigating B24's in WWII, he saw a B24's wing flying by itself. The Japanese had set the plane on fire from nose to tail, and the body separated from the wings. The B24 has the wings on top of the fuselage, so the wings could stay together. The body, of course, fell into the clouds below, but the wings stayed aloft. And naturally, because they didn't have to carry a fuselage around, they accelerated, and lazily curved out of sight of grandpa, who thought he might have been the only person to ever see something like that (and survive to tell the tale...)

Awesome and terrifying story, thank you for sharing.

Also in Belgium, in 1989 a MiG 23 crashed in a house killing one person after the pilot ejected over Poland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash