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This is one of the worst cases in history of taking a wrong fucking turn. An American bomber group in World War II wanted to blow up a German tank factory, but the navigator fucked up and they blew some holes in a small city instead. They also lost their fighter escort, and the trip home was not fun. It was not fun because only a few of them even made it home.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 27, 1944--
Kassel is a city smack in the middle of Germany where they manufactured Tiger and Panther tanks, so of course the Allies wanted to blow the shit out of it. And they did. Several times. The city had almost a quarter million people living in it before the war, but by the time the war was over there were only 50,000 left. Not all of them died in bombing raids, they just said living here sucks and everything is blowed up let’s go somewhere else.
Anyway, on September 27, 1944, there was another one of those bombing raids, conducted by the Eight Air Force. One of the bomber groups, the 445th, had a navigator in the lead plane who must not have had enough coffee, because he led his and 34 other bombers about 20 miles northeast of Kassel. They knew they’d taken a bad turn, but if they turned back they’d have run into their own bombers, so they said fuck it lets fly to this small city of Göttingen and blow up their railyard. Except they missed, and instead damaged some buildings and streets, injuring three people.
Because they left the main group, they no longer had a fighter escort. After the ineffectual attack on Göttingen they turned south and then west to head back to England. They were about a hundred miles behind the rest of the Eighth, and that’s when over a hundred German fighter planes attacked.
In only a few minutes, 25 of the 35 American B-24 Liberator bombers were blown out of the sky by Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs that had cannons specially designed for destroying such large aircraft. Another six of the bombers were badly damaged and didn’t make it safely back to England. Only four of the original 35 bombers landed safely in England, and only then because a fighter group of American P-51 Mustangs came to the rescue to scare off the German fighter craft.
In all, 118 American bomber crews from the 445th died in that mission, 11 of whom were murdered after having parachuted onto German soil. Another 121 ended up as prisoners and survived the war. The ill-fated mission represents the greatest single-day loss for an individual bomber group in aviation history.
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