On October 4 a mission to Frankfurt and the Saar was foiled by bad weather. Then better conditions allowed a series of missions reminiscent of Blitz Week, culminating in the horrifying second attack on Schweinfurt. On October 8 the Americans attacked the aircraft plant at Bremen and the U-boat yards there and at Vegesack, using Carpet, a jammer to deal with German gun-laying radar, for the first time. As soon as the P-47s turned back there was tough opposition, and 30 of the 399 bombers dispatched were lost.
This was followed, on October 9, by an unusual mission deep into the Baltic by 378 B-17s and B-24s. As a diversion to attract the Luftwaffe, one force attacked an aircraft plant at Anklam, while other forces struck further east, at the Focke-Wulf plant at Marienburg in East Prussia, the U-board yards at Danzig, and the Polish port of Gdynia. The diversion succeeded, at a high cost; the Anklam force lost 18 of the 106 bombers that reached the target. (The other forces lost 10 planes in all.) There was little flak at Marienburg; the B-17s bombed from just 11,000 to 14,500 feet with great accuracy, using an effective new weapon, the M47A2 napalm-filled bomb. Smoke screens foiled the attack on Danzig and hampered the one on Gdynia, which nevertheless did severe damage. Overall, the mission was a remarkable success, but it was to a relatively lightly defended area.
The next mission, on October 10, was also unusual. While the B-24s flew a diversion, 274 B-17s went to Munster to disrupt rail and waterway traffic, not by hitting transportation facilities but by bombing the residential center of the city to kill the railroad workers. Bomber Command never aimed so frankly at killing German civilians as the Eighth Air Force did at Munster. It was a strange choice of targets in other ways; transportation was not a high-priority target at this time, and even a destructive isolated attack would not hurt Germany’s flexible rail system. (As we shall see later, however, attacks on a few targets, one near Munster, could have wrecked the German waterway system.) Munster was deep in Germany, and the Eighth was likely to meet strong opposition. Morality apart, the mission was of doubtful wisdom.
It was a nightmare. Plans to provide escort all the way to Miinster miscarried. The 56th Fighter Group, which was to take the bombers to the target, joined the Fortresses late and had to leave early; 200 German fighters then piled into the leading combat wing. Twin-engine fighters, and even bombers, fired rockets and large-caliber cannon, while single-engine fighters attacked head-on, destroying all 12 planes of the leading 100th Bomb Group. Then the Germans hit the 390th Group, flying the high position, and destroyed half its planes. The battle lasted until the withdrawal escort arrived. In all, 30 bombers were lost and 3 written off. Two groups of the relatively unhurt second task force, forced off the bomb run at Munster by mistake, completed the disaster. Trying to hit an airfield at Entschede in the Netherlands as a “target of opportunity,” they accidentally killed 155 Dutch civilians. It was not one of the Eighth Air Force’s better days.’®
World History
