The Kassel Raid, 27th September 1944
The Kassel Raid, 27th September 1944
An excerpt that describes a typical day for a USAAF Bombardment Group operating from England - but a day that was going to turn into a terrible disaster
In The Kassel Raid, 27 September 1944: The Largest Loss by USAAF Group on any Mission in WWII, Eric Ratcliffe recreates a mission flown by an 8th Air Force BG. Using many contemporary descriptions, he paints a picture of how the heavy bomber crews lived, fought - and sometimes died. He describes experiences that were familiar to thousands of men flying from England during the war - except that this day ended in a disaster when many men died.
Due to a navigational error, the lead Liberator of the 445th Heavy Bombardment Group turned due east instead of east-south-east and the following thirty-four bombers missed Kassel altogether, attacking an alternative target. But there was worse to come. The change of direction meant that the bombers lost their escorting Mustangs, and on the return flight, they were pounced on by 150 enemy fighters – and massacred.
Within just six minutes, the 445th experienced the greatest single-day losses suffered by any group from one airfield in the history of aviation warfare. Twenty-five of the Liberators were shot down inside Germany itself; three crashed en route to the coast (two in France and one in Belgium); two made forced landings at an emergency airfield in England; and the last came to grief within sight of home. Just four of the original thirty-five B-24s landed safely back at Tibenham.
The following excerpt describes how the day began for the men of the 445th:
A COLD, damp Wednesday morning - 27 September 1944. It’s double British summertime and at 2.30 am there was a squeal of brakes as a Jeep pulled into site seven on the 445th Heavy Bombardment Group’s base close to the village of Tibenham, twelve miles south of the historic Norman city of Norwich.
Moving through the more substantial concrete Quonset Huts known as ‘Officer Country’, using his Bakelite flashlight, the driver, a QC orderly (in charge of quarters) known as ‘the Gremlin’, entered the huts, waking crews due to fly that day. In the chilly environment, sleepy men would emerge from under blankets to hear the name of the pilot whose crew was rostered to fly that day. Sometimes one, sometimes both crews from the hut would hear the dreaded words such as ‘Lieutenants Miner and Schaen crews due to fly this morning, briefing 03:30 hours.’
Second Lt George Collar heard the squealing brakes, but the 27-year-old from Michigan wasn’t scheduled to fly that morning. He had a three-day pass in his pocket and so was surprised when the Gremlin told him to get up as he was flying. Collar was originally bombardier of Reg Miner’s crew when they had all arrived in June a week after D-day, but then Reg had been made a lead crew so they had replaced George with two specialist radar crewmen and he had become a spare. He now had twenty-eight missions with several different crews in his logbook so, when 2nd Lt Aarvig, the bombardier on Schaen’s crew, failed to return from a three-day pass, it was an unfortunate George who was rostered for his 29th and, as it turned out, final mission.
Officers were usually billeted two crews to a hut; pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bombardier together. Some of the officers had been woken even earlier, the lead crews had already been briefed on the day’s mission, and as lead crews they had the responsibility of getting the group on target at the correct time.
At other sites more QC orderlies were going through the same ritual, waking the sergeants and technical sergeants who made up the enlisted men of the crews. They were billeted in their own quarters at sites two and three and the site originally built for the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) for the RAF.
They were housed in corrugated, curved-roof Nissen huts, which weren’t quite as spacious as the rectangular concrete Quonsets, but there were still ten guys to the hut, with just a single small coal-fired pot bellied stove in the centre for heating. But on site four there were a couple of large Nissen huts, which actually housed thirty-six crewmen in each. Most guys knew they were down to fly and, in a lot of cases, found it difficult to sleep, waiting for the noise of the Jeep’s engine, squealing brake and the footsteps of the Gremlin. Those who knew how much fuel was being loaded would take an educated guess at their destination. They all hoped it wasn’t going to be a deep penetration raid to the ‘Big B’ - Berlin.
Some ofthe guys made a quick call into the base chapel, hoping to shift the odds in their favour, taking communion from the Catholic chaplain Father Joe Quinlan. For the other denominations, Captain Taylor Minga as group chaplain officiated. In the hut of Pilot 1st Lt Jackson C. Mercer’s crew, Lt Leo Pouliot, his co-pilot, heard the door creak, followed by shuffling steps as the Gremlin went round the edge of bomb-aimer George Noorigian’s bed to get to the light switch. Covering his head with a blanket, Leo tried to catch a few more moments in the sack, shivering at the thought of getting up in the cold English morning air, while the orderly woke up Jackson Mercer, George, and navigator Milton Fandler before turning his attention to the shivering Leo.
Reluctantly rising, Leo dressed and went to the washroom to splash icy water on his face before they all headed off to the mess hall for breakfast. Guys headed for the latrines to ensure bowels and bladders were empty. Intestinal gas could be extremely uncomfortable in unpressurised aircraft at 23,000ft and the extreme cold meant relieving oneself was a major epic to be avoided if at all possible.
There were several messes at Tibenham - separate ones for groundcrew, aircrew, officers and enlisted men - clustered round the communal sites and near the officers’ club in sites one and two. Although the fare was, in theory, the same in each, the quality of the cook and mess sergeants varied considerably. Both officers and enlisted men would resort to bartering.
Game in the form of rabbits and pheasants and even the occasional deer were poached from the local area with the issue 45-calibre pistols or shotguns ‘borrowed’ from the skeet shoot, or other weaponry which included rifles, machine guns, home-made bows and arrows and a crossbow.
The resulting game could be swapped for canned goods, like Spam or peaches, or even cans of steak which could then be cooked on the pot-bellied stove. The downside of this was the coal ration for heating the hut diminished more rapidly. It was always severely rationed anyway, so ways were found to ‘liberate’ it from the wire-fenced and sometimes-guarded compound, usually by stealing a contractor’s ladder and waiting for the dead of night when the guard wouldn’t be so keen to do his rounds.
Bribery and corruption also existed. One mess officer was court-martialled and sent to prison for his dealings with base supplies on the black market, and a large amount of American rations was found hidden in the bam of a local farm.
Joining the line for breakfast, and seeing it was powdered egg rather than the fresh eggs usually served when there was a mission on, Leo settled for a cup of coffee and a peanut butter sandwich, hurriedly eaten as briefing was looming. Texan 2nd Lt Walter Eugene George (who preferred to use his middle name rather than Walter) was co-pilot in 1st Lt Donald Brent’s crew. He usually took the wings off his uniform so he could sneak into the ground officers’ mess hall as he thought the food was better there than the stuff usually served up in the aircrew officers’ mess. But that morning he didn’t like the look of what was on offer and just settled for some canned peaches.
Other crew maybe had stronger stomachs. It was a cool morning; you could tell autumn was approaching as co-pilot 2nd Lt Carroll Snidow and navigator Maynard Jones walked through the early-morning darkness to the mess hall, where they had the powdered egg for breakfast and remarked it was ‘very good’. Little did Carroll and ‘Jonesy’ know it was going to be their last good meal for a long time. For 117 guys queuing for breakfast in the messes that morning it was going to be their last meal ever.
Other crews had better luck at a different site. Lt John French’s crew was woken earlier - at 02.15 - by Sgt Kelly shaking bomb-aimer Robert Timms and ‘Doc’ Cochran with the news it was fresh eggs for breakfast. They had a full bomb-load of 5001b demolition bombs and Asbestos Alice had 2,500 gallons of gas on board. Dressing quickly they headed out for what was scheduled to be their 30th and last mission. When they arrived in their mess hall they found many guys already seated and a queue forming, with the smell of hot coffee and fresh eggs permeating the room.
Getting in line, Doc exclaimed, ‘This is real service, the last mission and fresh eggs for breakfast!’ Grabbing their food, they sat down with their buddy ‘Mac’ MacGregor, who was also on his 34th and penultimate mission, Major McCoy was going to lead the group - on top of the bomb and fuel loads — pointed to a ‘deep’ mission. Mac, a native of Delhi, New York, had completed nearly two years of his aeronautical degree before the army drafted him as a combat engineer, but after a few months he was transferred to the 8th Air force as a trainee bombardier.
He arrived at Tibenham with the Bud Williams crew, who flew their first mission on D-Day, 6 June. Now, nearly four months later and having flown with six different crews as a lead bombardier, he was going to fly with his best friend Carl’s crew. As he forked the last of his egg into his mouth he contemplated he should have finished his missions by now, but he had been caught by the increase from 30 to 35 missions before getting shipped home. So he thought: ‘Just one more after this ‘milk run’ and it will all be over for me.’ Unfortunately he didn’t know German fighter pilots would have a different idea.
Not all the crewmen in the mess hall were scheduled to fly. Lt John Steinbacher, one of the original pilots to land at Tibenham, had done his twenty-five missions and then, waiting while ‘strings were pulled’ to be transferred to fighters, had volunteered to do another five.
He often got up early and went to get fresh eggs for breakfast even if not listed to fly that day and, being an ‘old hand’, he would pass on tips and tales to the new crews with remarks like: ‘When the Flak is black powder puffs, its gone off and isn’t going to hurt, but when the bursts have yellow centres they are getting close. But don’t worry, because you’ll never see the one that gets you! ’
John was one of the lucky ones to complete his thirty missions and he got his wish to pilot fighters, flying a P51 Mustang. Unfortunately his luck was soon to run out when John met his end doing a ‘beat up’ at his old bomber base at Tibenham on 9 December 1944. Flying a Mustang and celebrating his first fighter kill, he got into a high-speed stall and crashed just south of the airfield, near Tivetshall Saint Margaret Church.
Some crewmen, in the hut which housed the officers of the Hansen and Pearson crews, didn’t make breakfast. Pilot 1st Lt Ralph Pearson had turned over and gone back to sleep. Waking a few minutes before briefing he and several others frantically scrambled to get dressed and arrived just in time to stand at the back as the olive-green panel door was closed behind them and briefing started.
Out on the airfield ground crews were already hard at work, pulling through the propellers to make sure oil hadn’t drained down into the bottom cylinder heads while the engine sat idle, which could lock the cylinder and damage the engine. Crews were also bombing and fuelling their aircraft, like the well-worn green-painted Mairzy Doats, and the newer, unpainted Patches and Patty Girl.
Among them, on stand number 32, the cold, grey bare-aluminum shape of 42-50383 B-24 H-25 King Kong was filled with 2,500 gallons of fuel and six 1,0001b general-purpose bombs as it waited for Lt Baynham’s crew. On stand 20, No. 331 Percy was waiting for 1st Lt Krivik’s crew, and over on stand 36 stood the dull-grey aluminium fuselage of the Sweetest Rose of Texas, adorned with great artwork, was waiting for 1st Lt Paul Swofford and his crew to bring her to life. First Lt Joe Johnson alighted at hard stand 14 to see the beautiful, brand-new, and immaculate Fridget Bridget glistening in the early morning dew.
The ground crew worked tirelessly, S/Sgt/Gunner John Robinson recalled: ‘If it was not for them we could not have won the war. They worked 20 out of 24 hours a day. Highly-dedicated to the crew they kept flying. Our crew chief babied us and the aircraft like a mother hen.’
Over in the bomb dump on the extreme western side of the airfield, Corporal Joseph A. Gerety Jr, a member of the 1826 ordnance attached to 445th, had been up all night assembling the thirty-seven bomb loads for the aircraft, consisting of six 1,000 1b bombs for all the aircraft except the lead crews - which carried 500-pounders - which meant nearly 250 bombs had to have their fuses screwed in and the safety pins inserted to stop the little propellers from turning (when the bombs were dropped these spun in the airflow and armed the bomb). Then the bombs had to be loaded onto trollies and towed to each of the dispersals for hoisting into the B-24’s bomb bay. By the time the aircrews were at briefing, the ordnance guys were heading for a well-earned meal and bed.
©Eric Ratcliffe 2020, 'The Kassel Raid, 27 September 1944: The Largest Loss by USAAF Group on any Mission in WWII'. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd .
Affiliate Links
Get World War II Today every day...
Then, at about 2130 a clatter of mortar bombs came down - lighting the woods and roads with a queer blue light. The men scattered like demons in a pantomime. I was lifted off my feet with the blast of one bomb and I came to, lying against the foot of a tree. There was no one about so I pushed on quickly and eventually contacted two of my section... A machine-gun was firing at us...
27th September 1944 - The Kassel Raid Disaster
While we were just getting back together after the fourth turn, someone in our plane called out, "There’s a dogfight!" And all the time I’m thinking, "Oh boy, are we gonna catch it from headquarters when we get home," because we dropped the bombs uselessly.
Then our radio operator, Joe Gilfoil – who was mortally wounded that day – said, "There’s a fire in the bomb bay!"