Maximum Overdrive revisited: Could Machinery Already Have Basic Consciousness?

You should ask this guy, might have one or two interesting stories.

Man Who Has Had Sex With 999 Cars Will Marry VW Beetle

I (being a pilot) have to agree that as weird as it seems a lot of WW2 flyers thought their aircraft would either accept them as 'it's' own or they would feel it didn't 'accept' them and they didn't feel as safe in 'her'!
Here's a true story that I don't have any documentation on at this time but it was in a book written about the Boeing B17 4-engined bombers in WW2! I can neither prove or disprove what was told by a ground crew on the coast of England, (but will put it here hoping someone will find it interesting) there were a lot of rudimentary sites along the coast of England that a bomber returning from a mission in trouble could land and avoid ditching in the channel.
One day (I am paraphrasing what I read about 20 years ago) The klaxon sounded signifying there was a B17 coming across the channel heading for the airstrip. The witnesses said they soon seen a B17 with gear down and all motors running heading towards the field. They said it made a beautiful landing and rolled up to the staging area, One of the men tried to signal the pilot to shut it's engines down, no signs from the aircraft! Finally figuring they may have all been severely wounded they peered into the waist gunners opening and saw nothing so they opened the forward hatch near the navigator/radioman and climbed up into it.
What they found they never forgot, the aircraft was empty, no flight crew at all, the thing that baffled them was the lack of battle damage (signifying the crew shouldn't have bailed out) the hatches were closed, why was the gear down? The lower ball turret was in the down position, everything normal except the missing flight crew! How did it happen to line up with the runway? The men swear they hear the motors throttle back once it touched down.
The crew was never found, the men were told not to talk about it and according to the story men said in all appearances, it was under perfect control when it landed!
The entire hardcover book was everything about the B17, my wife bought it for me because of my interest in B 17's it was a small chapter and it was entitled something like "Were the aircraft more than machines"?
I never saw it but someone told me there was a Twilight Zone (or similar show) loosely based on this incident.
What do I think? I can't say. I have witnessed many things that seem to only be explainable as paranormal but I still remain a skeptic (it's frustrating! LOL) I know according to the story these guys all believed it was more than an aluminum machine!
If I can find the book, I will do a proper job of cleaning the story and footnotes up better.
Just thought someone may find this interesting.