Overview of the Kassel Mission
By George Collar
The 445th Bomb Group was almost wiped out, and I went down on my twenty-ninth mission, during the infamous Kassel raid of September 27, 1944.
It started out uneventfully enough, with 39 planes scheduled to take off from our group. By the time we got into Germany there had been four aborts, so eventually 35 planes dropped their bombs. The weather over the continent was not very good, with a thick undercast, cloud base about 3,000 feet and tops 6-7000 feet. It was planned to drop the bombs through the clouds using the PFF in the lead ship.
The 445th was leading the 2nd Combat Wing, the other groups in the wing being the 389th and the 453rd. The lead ship was that of Capt. John Chilton, with Maj. Donald McCoy as command pilot. Deputy lead was Capt. Web Uebelhoer, with Capt. Jim Graham as deputy command pilot. I happened to be flying with Lt. James Schaen in the 702nd BS; we were in the high right squadron.
Major McCoy (right), Kassel Mission Commanding Officer
We were approaching the I.P. in a southeasterly direction, where we were supposed to make a slight left turn in an east-southeasterly direction toward Kassel, but for some reason the lead ship turned almost directly east, a mistake which would take us past the target city of Kassel, too far to the north. The only explanation was that the radar man had made a grievous error.
Practically every navigator in our group picked up on this mistake almost instantly, but it was too late for the lead ship to correct to the right, as he would have run into the stream of bombers coming up from the rear. In hindsight we can say that the correct thing to do would have been to make a 360° turn to the left and come in on the rear of the second division, but Major McCoy decided to continue on east and bomb the city of Gottin-gen, about 50 miles away. As a result we lost our fighter escort, and flew alone to our own destruction.
Some of the pilots contacted the lead ship to report the error, but the only signal they received was "Keep in tight—Keep it together".
We carried on east, and finally dropped our bombs at Gottingen. We then made a turn to the south, and in the vicinity of Eisenach, we made a right turn to proceed west. By this time we were probably a hundred miles behind the rest of the division.
Just as we made the turn, we were attacked from the rear by between 100 and 150 German fighters. They attacked us line abreast in three waves. Most of these fighters were specially adapted FW-190s equipped with extra armor, and both 20 and 30mm cannons. They were accompanied by a smaller number of ME-109s.
The battle probably lasted only a few minutes, but it was a horrendous attack, as the FW-190 assault fighters passed through the bomber formations with 20 and 30mm cannons blazing, and the 50 cal. machine guns of the B-24s responding. The skies were full of bright flashes from the exploding shells. Burning and exploding airplanes were plummeting earthward; debris from the planes was spinning through the air. Bomb bay doors floated down like leaves. In between, many parachutes were blossoming out and carrying flyers toward the under-cast and an unknown fate below. Now I wasn't supposed to be on this raid, as I was due for a three day pass and was scheduled to leave for London that morning, so I was surprised when they rousted me out of bed at 3:00 AM and told me that I was to take the place of Lt. Jim Schaen's bombardier, who had failed to return from London on the evening of the 26th.
