Three of his P-38s, fohowing orders he had given them out of hearing of the strategic genius, dropped their bombs that instant and turned to take on the Messerschmidts. The three were in the rear. In case it got as far as an official inquiry, all the others could truthfully swear they hadn’t seen anybody drop bombs in contravention of specific orders not to do so.
That turned out to be a moot point anyway. There were forty-odd German fighters, and not one of the three P-38s who rose to meet them made it back to England.
The Germans had cleverly designed their 88mm aircraft cannon so the muzzle could be depressed for use against tanks and other ground forces.
Thus, when the sub pens came into view, they were partially obscured by the bursts of ack-ack shells.
Six P-38s were shot down by antiaircraft fire. Three of them simply disappeared in a puff of smoke. These had obviously been hit by the 88s.
There was no way to tell whether the other three were downed by 88s, 20mm Oerlikon automatic cannons, or machine-gun fire.
Twenty-two P-38s successfully completed the bomb run. Of the forty four 500-pound bombs “thrown” toward the sub pen entrances, it was estimated that eighteen or twenty entered the sub pens. Aerial reconnaissance indicated that these had done little or no damage.
Two P-38s were lost on the return leg of the flight, one of them to a Messerschmidt ME109E and the other to unknown causes. Possibly a wounded pilot lost consciousness. A final fatality occurred at Ibsley when a P-38 attempted a wheels-up landing and exploded on contact with the runway.
A story circulated through the officers’ messes of the Eighth Air Force that the group commander of the 311th Fighter Group–KTHOSE poor bastards who got the shit kicked out of them at Saint-Lazare sub pens”–committed a physical assault upon the Eighth Air Force Plans and Training officer whose idea the mission had been.
According to the story, the assault had been hushed up. The Commander of the 311th was a West Pointer, for one thing, and he’d been a Flying Tiger with ten kills for another and for a third, his own P-38 had been shot up so badly they didn’t even consider repairing it. They just hauled it off to the bone yard.
TSREE] Froulzlurt os Illloin, Aermony As the Berlin-Frankfurt train backed into Frankfurt’s Hauptbahnhof, Obersturmbannfuhrer Johann Muller stood in the aisle of the first-class coach looking out the window. The station platforms were covered by a glass-and steel arch, as if an enormous tube had been slit in half lengthwise and placed over the tracks. The framework of the arch remained intact, but many, perhaps most, of the glass windows had been blown out by bombing.
Snow had come through these openings, leaving a soot-colored slush over most of the platform.
Muxer’s policeman’s eye saw, too, the security in place. At the far end of the station, in order to make sure that no one left the platform by way of the yards, there stood two gray-uniformed members of the Feldgendarmerie (Military Police) and a civilian wearing an ankle-length leather overcoat and a gray snap-brim felt hat.
In theory, the civilian was working in plainclothes to facilitate his efforts in defense of Reich security. In practice, since only persons with a special ration coupon had access to full-length leather coats, he might as well have worn a hatband with “Gestapo” printed on it.
As a general rule of thumb, Obersturmbannfuhrer Muller did not have much respect for the Gestapo. There were some genuine detectives in its ranks, but the bullk of them were patrolman types promoted over their abilities. You didn’t have to be much of a detective if you were armed with power to arrest without giving a reason, and could then conduct an “interrogation, “which generally began with stripping the suspect naked and beating him senseless before any questions were put to him.
Near the station end of the platform were the checkpoints. One was manned by the Feldgendarmerie and the other by the Railway Police.
The first checked the identity and travel documents of military personnel-Army, Navy, and Air Force–and the other checked everyone else. Two more men in leather overcoats and snap-brim caps stood where they could watch this procedure.