On Thursday, 28 September 1944, a force of 283 Consolidated B-24
Liberator bombers from the USAAF's 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing, took off
from their bases in Britain and headed out across the North Sea escorted
by 198 P-51 Mustang fighters. The bombers' target was the industrial
city of Kassel in northern Germany.
Among the bombers assigned to the raid were the aircraft of the 445th
Heavy Bombardment Group. Thirty-five of the 445th's Liberators, along
with the 336 men who made up their crews, took off from their base near
the village of Tibenham in Norfolk. Their specific target that day was
the engineering works of Henschel & Sohn which built Tiger and Panther
tanks.
Kassel had been bombed by the Allied air forces in the past, most
notably in October 1943 when more than 500 bombers had dropped 1,800
tons of bombs creating a firestorm that had ravaged the city. The raid
on 28 September 1944, however, would have a far different result.
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-five bombers missed Kassel altogether, attacking an
alternative target. But there was worst was 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 human cost was equally high. In the course of just a few minutes,
117 airmen lost their lives, including eleven who were murdered after
parachuting safely to the ground. A further 121 men were taken prisoner;
only ninety-eight returned to duty.
In this highly moving account of the Kassel raid, the author, who lives
close to the Tibenham airfield, uncovers the painful details of those
terrible moments in September 1944 through the stories of those who
survived one of the Second World War's most disastrous operations in the
USAAF's battle against the Luftwaffe.
