Robert Heller was born in December 1921 in Lake Wood, Ohio and became a member of the United States Army's 91st Bomb Group, 8th Air Force [Annotator's Note: 91st Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force] during World War 2. He had graduated high school and completed one year of college in Cleveland, Ohio where he completed a civilian training course that earned him a pilot's license. When the Great Depression affected his family's finances, he could no longer afford to stay in school. He was faced with the prospect of the draft so Heller responded to a newspaper recruiting advertisement for the Army Air Corps, figuring he would prefer to serve the country doing "something interesting." In November 1941, Heller was sent to Texas for basic infantry training, and remembers that his first day off was the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He took flight training in Louisiana and, in the spring of 1942, graduated as a pilot and an officer.

Initially training in single engine airplanes with an instructor, Robert Heller liked flying, but was a "little bit afraid." Many of his classmates "washed out," but in January 1943 Heller passed this tests and went on to train on more sophisticated aircraft. He expressed his desire to fly "big planes" and was eventually assigned to a B-17 [Annotator’s Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] crew as a pilot.

The ten member B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] crew that Robert Heller joined was competent, but composed of individuals. He saw a difference between the attitudes of the officers and the non-commissioned men. Heller deployed with a cohesive crew to Antwerp, Belgium, but on their first mission in Europe, Heller and his crew were separated. Heller flew as co-pilot with an experienced crew on a bombing mission over France; his crew went out with an experienced pilot with a different objective, and ran into difficulty. The plane was shot down with some crewmembers lost and some captured, but the result was that Heller had to begin again with a new crew.

It was a month or more before Robert Heller became the pilot of a new crew. As new personnel came in, especially top brass, different approaches to bombing patterns were explored. He remembers there were serious differences of opinion about how far apart the planes should fly, and in what formation. It was suggested that bombing at a high altitude might be more effective, and the commanders were determined to attempt bombing from 30,000 feet. On 12 August 1943, Heller's fifteenth mission took him over Gelsenkirchen, Germany to target an oil refinery. At very high altitude, the plane got "sloppy," and became difficult to control and keep in formation. Heller's plane was shot down and he was taken prisoner by the Germans.

Robert Heller was flying at an unnerving altitude and had not yet reached his target when his plane was overtaken by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and enemy fighter fire. One engine went out, the plane lost altitude, and he dropped out of formation. His plan was to rejoin the bomber group on their return, but he lost another engine and didn't have enough power to complete his turn. Enemy fighters were in hot pursuit, and "things were happening all around." Heller could hear shots coming through the plane, his communications were "fried up," and one of his crew was mortally wounded. He was struggling with the plane, but he still thought he might get back to England. He decided to drop his bombs, and took the plane to a lower level, hoping to find cloud cover and lose the fighters. He sent his copilot to determine the condition of the crew, and the report was "really bad."

Robert Heller was low on fuel and had to decide what to do. While looking for a field to take the plane down, he sent a signal for the guys down in the front to bail out, and they did. Letting down slowly, with one or two fighters chasing and shooting at him, he was afraid that the plane was going to blow up. He yelled to the navigator, the bombardier, and the engineer to jump, and they did. Setting his sights on the rise of a big hill, he slid in, with the engines on fire. Heller and the co-pilot went through the plane, got the remaining two wounded crewmen out and clear of the wreck. Soon three or four members of the German home guard appeared, and held Heller and his crew at gunpoint, saying something like, "For you the war is over." Heller agreed with them.

Being as friendly possible, Robert Heller and his crew surrendered. As far as he knew, only one of the crew had died, and he doesn't know what became of the rest. The Germans took the non-commissioned personnel off in a truck, and Heller was taken to Stalag Luft III [Annotator's Note: a prisoner of war camp for captured Western Allied air force personnel near Zagan, Poland], on the border between Germany and Poland, where he spent most of the rest of the war. He has returned to Europe on multiple occasions, but never went back to where he was imprisoned.