Target Berlin: An Epic True Story of American Valor and Sacrifice in the War-Torn Skies over Europe (The Air Combat Trilogy Book 1) by Ethell Jeffrey & Price Alfred

Author:Ethell, Jeffrey & Price, Alfred [Ethell, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1853674915
Publisher: Silvertail Books
Published: 2020-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

The distance from Heinersdorf to Section 97 of the Grunewald is 7 miles.

Lowell Watts observed the tussle with admiration and growing apprehension. ‘One ship blew up and three others dropped away from their formations. But still the formations went in to drop their bombs. It didn’t seem that anything could fly through that. But there they were, Flying Fortresses sailing proudly away from the scene of devastation. It wasn’t too comforting to realize that soon we would enter that Hellish scene.’

Of the 75 bombers in the leading four boxes, one had been shot down and 49 suffered flak damage.

The bombs from the 4th Combat Wing exploded across the Steglitz district, a mainly residential area. One chance cluster of bombs landed immediately to the south of the Hauptkadettenanstalt, the barracks of the SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler the Fuehrer’s personal bodyguard, but without causing any serious damage to the buildings.

At the Telefunken works nearby, Horst Krieger and his workmates had taken shelter in their dugouts when they saw the bombers approaching. Huddled in the semi-darkness, they felt the walls shudder as bombs exploded nearby.

Marianne Wittstock, in the cellar of the Rittberg Hospital with those patients who could be moved, now began to get frantic for the safety of her new-born daughter as the sound of exploding bombs came closer. One of the doctors tried to comfort her, saying that her baby was with the others in an especially strong concrete bunker nearby and would come to no harm. But his words did little good: so far as Marianne Wittstock was concerned a young baby could be safe only with its mother.

In the cellar of his house, one mile away to the west, 66-year-old estate agent Adolf Echtler sat with his wife Alma listening to the whistles and crumps of the bombs. Then there was a colossal bang and everything shuddered, the room filled with dust and loose sand. Coughing and gasping for air Echtler and his wife struggled up the staircase on all fours. At the top he pushed open the door leading outside and saw that where the neighboring house had been was only a pile of rubble. His secretary had taken shelter there. Fearing for her safety he dashed to the remains shouting her name but there was no reply. He tried to pull away the rubble with his bare hands but the task was too much for an old man. Then he heard yet more bombers approaching and had to run back to his own shelter.

Attacking with the 4th Combat Wing, Lieutenant Roy Menning piloting B-17 ‘Casey Jones’ of the 94th Bomb Group told his crew to keep a sharp watch on a nearby Fortress bearing another group’s markings, which had slipped into their formation about half an hour earlier. Like everyone else he had heard rumors of bombers flown by enemy crews trying to infiltrate formations and to Menning it seemed this aircraft might be one of them. ‘A captured B-17 manned by Germans followed us around the Berlin area except in the heavy flak.

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