by Gee, Colin
That was not something Lassiter had considered and the thought left him cold.
One bullet had hit the radio and the Radar Operator was desperately trying to fix it, despite the fact that he had dislocated two fingers on his left hand when the impact happened. Try as he might, transmitting was beyond them, although they could hear more successes from their comrades.
Feeling sick, cold, and bleeding like a stuck pig, Lassiter turned for his new home, leaving the Cajun and the Pole to finish the job, which they did very efficiently and at no cost. The pair left only two PO-2’s to return to relate the horrors endured by the Night Witches.
In three years of combat against the Luftwaffe many of them had died, but never had they suffered such losses in one single night and it would take them a long time to recover.
None of their highly decorated female officers in the air that night survived the encounter with the 416th.
Lassiter executed what he considered to be a passable landing on return, considering Mackenzie was not feeling too confident in his navigation and his own vision was not all it could be.
His commanding officer begged to differ and rode out in a jeep to chew the Captain out for such a poor landing.
No transmissions to warn their base, no red flares on approach to mark wounded onboard, the surprised Colonel was greeted with a burned Mackenzie passing him an unconscious Washington and soiling his Commander’s pristine Number One uniform with blood and soot.
Shouting for help, the Colonel assisted Washington to the ground and then helped Mackenzie down, trying not to touch his badly burned legs.
Smoke gently wafted from the open door as something started to burn once more.
The Colonel may have been a martinet but he was no coward and he plunged into the aircraft to get Lassiter as the flames started to build.
The airfield fire crews arrived and tackled the internal fire and both men were assisted to safety, one choking and coughing, the other unconscious from his loss of blood.
Base medics were all over them in seconds and the four were rushed away to the hospital tent on the north side of the strip.
Working hard, the docs got bloods and fluids into all three aircrew and by the end of two hours hard labour they were satisfied enough to assure the smoke blackened Base Commander that all three would live, and two would fight again, Mackenzie the probable sole exception.
Wheezing and taking his fill from the oxygen at his side, the Colonel wondered what the hell had gone on that night and couldn’t wait to hear the story of ‘Night Reaper’ in full.
Some of what had happened had been filled in by an excitable Cajun pilot who was in sickbay having his hand stitched after cutting it climbing out of his aircraft, but there was clearly so much more to hear.
When the Colonel eventually learned of the full events of that night from Washington, Mackenzie, and Lassiter, he was amazed and congratulated them all.
On reaching his office later, he firstly composed himself, and then composed his formal recommendations for the Medal of Honor.
0423 hrs Friday 10th August 1945, Battle lines of the 15th US Armored Division, Bad Driburg, Germany.
Having recovered from their appalling exercise in front of the Russians, the mainly untried personnel of the newly formed 15th US Armored Division had finally regained their haughty swagger. Few had seen action, and most of those that had were the product of their former commanders moving on problem people rather than sending quality personnel to provide example and experience.
Removing the inept Divisional Commander had been a first step and they were also boosted by a sprinkling of talent from the 13th and 20th Armored Divisions, both now back in the States training for the Invasion of Japan.
The inclusion of some ex-POW tank crew made the most difference, as a handful of experienced men from the prime US Armored formations took their place alongside the greenhorns.
Not a moment too soon, as the 15th was handed a difficult mission.
Their task was to attack the Russian 3rd Army to their front and push them back to the Diemel River, relieving the pressure north of Kassel. The Soviets had already been in action for four days and had been badly handled at Hildesheim so were probably ripe for plucking.
Major Nathaniel Parker may have been a prize fool but he was looking forward to the Friday dawn attack, commanding his own company of Pershing Tanks in the 361st Tank Btn, 15th Armored Div.
Clad as he would be in forty-two tons of mobile armour and armed with a devastating 90mm high-velocity gun, his excitement about charging through enemy positions kept his sleep unrewarding for most of the night, dreaming as he was of medals and glory.
Soon he would show that old kraut what it meant to be a tanker.
Elsewhere during the night, British and Commonwealth bomber crews visited a range of locations with varying degrees of success.
The railway junction at Prague was totally obliterated, where as the important junction at Dresden was hardly touched, and both missions cost the British and Commonwealth bomber force six aircraft apiece.
In Vienna, squadrons from North Italy caused great destruction. Once known as the Reichsbrücke, the newly renamed ‘Red Army Bridge’ was dropped into the Donau by a wave of high-explosive that left the city completely cut in two as other bridges, the work of many hours by Soviet engineers, were similarly destroyed.
The world-famous brick built Göltzsch Railway Viaduct was visited by three specially equipped Lancaster’s just as dawn was rising. None of the huge tallboy bombs actually hit but the explosions and shock waves were enough to topple the magnificent structure.
Whilst no military headquarters other than Zhukov’s was directly hit, many a Soviet Marshall and General got little sleep as high-explosive fell from the skies nearby.
The rest of the allied plan went well.
Up and down Europe, a maximum bomber effort put over thirteen-hundred aircraft into the attack, destroying railway lines and bridges, road junctions and bridges, airfields and bridges. All in an attempt to ruin Soviet logistics and to prevent free movement of the Red Army’s superior numbers.
Soviet night bombers passing in the opposite direction were often badly handled by allied night fighters using radar to hunt down their prey, although one notable and unfortunate Soviet success was the destruction again inflicted upon Frankfurt’s main airfield, closing it for the foreseeable future.
Every night fighter the Allies possessed went up and enjoyed remarkable successes, gutting numerous Soviet night fighter units sent up by the enemy. So much so that for that night and the nights that followed, it was the Allied Air forces that owned the skies in darkness.
Having received reinforcements from the disbanding units in the UK and those on their way home, ground attack squadrons threw themselves into one huge attack, one massive effort to claw back the inequality that faced them in daylight operations, mirroring the Soviet effort of 6th August but with less success.
Valuable pilots and aircraft were lost pressing home attacks through intense anti-aircraft fire or swarms of Soviet fighter planes. The savaged allied fighter’s flying escort were occasionally overwhelmed and on three occasions whole squadrons ceased to exist.
Both sides could recover, bringing new pilots and aircraft into action. The question was who could do so faster, and for now, it could only be the Russians.
American bombers then rose to do their work in daylight, repeating many of the targets from the night before.
Escorted by weary Mustangs, the Flying Fortresses and Liberators dropped thousands of pounds of high explosive on communications routes the length and breadth of Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland.
American losses were modest in bombers but the mission was yet again heavy on the fighters, whose second mission of the day cost more lives than the first.
When the evaluation was done by intelligence, it was felt that Soviet Night aviation had been dealt a crippling blow for some time to come. Communications
and logistics would definitely be disrupted and the effect of that should shortly be felt in a positive way by those facing the Soviet armies in the field. Higher than predicted allied losses, particularly in ground-attack and fighter aircraft, meant there could be no repeats, and as Eisenhower and Tedder firmly believed, should be no repeats.
The purpose had been to hit back, not lose their offensive air capability.
Washington did not receive the Medal of Honor for his actions that night, receiving the Silver Star instead. Lassiter and Mackenzie attended the White House in November that same year, having recovered reasonably well from their wounds, and were the first US aviators to be recommended for and awarded the Medal of Honor in the extended conflict that had become known as World War Three.
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
Ernest Hemingway
CHAPTER 48 – THE RIPOSTES
0545 hrs Friday 10th August 1945, 12th US Armored Division and other Assault formations of the US Fifteenth Army, Ochsenfurt- Goßmannsdorf, Germany.
Allied Forces – 494th Field Artillery Battalion and B Company, 92nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Battalion and 2nd Platoon, 152nd Signals Company, all of Combat Command ‘A’, and 495th Field Artillery Battalion of Combat Command ‘B’, all of 12th US Armored Division and 573rd AAA Btn [Mot] temp attached to 12th US Armored Division, all of US Fifteenth Army, US Twelfth Army Group.
Soviet Forces – 3rd Battalion, 912th Rifle Regiment and 2nd Battery, 975th Artillery Regiment, both of 243rd Rifle Division of 34th Guards Rifle Corps of 5th Guards Army, and Special Grouping Nautsev, 1st Regiment of 3rd Guards Rocket Barrage Division, both of 2nd Red Banner Central European Front.
In this instance the cavalry had a dangerous job, but a job they did well and with minimal casualties.
Pushing out, using the Main River as a secure right flank, they dashed towards Soviet infantry drawn up in cover in woods to the south of Goßmannsdorf who seemed to be preparing to move out in their own advance.
M5 Stuart tanks and M3 halftracks fired into troops about to embuss in their British-made universal carriers, causing chaos amongst the weary soldiers, chaos that was added to by the sound of artillery dropping to their rear. The bridge southeast of Goßmannsdorf had been destroyed two days previously.
Causing casualties with their fire, the cavalry darted in and out, braving anti-tank rifle and machine-gun fire but little else of note.
Captain Bortsov, the officer in charge of 3rd Battalion 912th Rifle, noted the obvious inexperience of the Amerikanisti, clustered together in one killing zone to his front, moving most certainly but confined to an area no more than five hundred metres across.
Perfect.
His artillery support officer received his orders and calmly relayed the coordinates to the officer in charge of the unit designated as support for this day’s bloody work.
Curiously, the enemy force to his front slipped to his right flank in one graceful movement, clearly meaning his riposte would fall on unoccupied ground.
Revising the orders and reorienting his own troopers to meet the possible attempt to outflank, he received with stoic acceptance the news that the radio was not functioning properly. His country had never been at its best when producing quality electrical items, although he suddenly remembered that the artillery officer was very proud of his new Canadian built Type 19 set, the same radio set his own command vehicle had enjoyed until it had been destroyed in the American air strike.
Bortsov was not to know that communications were being jammed by a twenty year old bespectacled American Corporal sat in a halftrack a kilometre away.
He watched with some annoyance as a regiment’s worth of Katyusha rockets arrived, ploughing up ground and bushes but doing no damage whatsoever to his intended target. Standard artillery rounds also arrived, 76.2mm he estimated, meaning that some of the divisional artillery had joined in the shoot.
Meanwhile, free from interference and harm, the American reconnaissance troops were presently flanking him towards Darstadt.
With typical Russian black humour, he congratulated himself on passing the problem to Drinkov’s 1st Battalion who were placed there, and reminded himself he would be accountable to the Colonel for wasting ammunition.
However, his more immediate problem now was sorting out his own battalion after the disruption, confirming his orders in the light of this changed American threat and silencing the artillery. The latter two would prove difficult without a useable radio so he swiftly moved to his command carrier where he was found a perplexed radio operator trying to do something useful with an uncooperative radio.
The urgency of the situation became more apparent as more artillery joined the barrage, brought in by officers who believed that the silence meant that the 279th Rifle Division was in trouble.
Which of course it was but did not yet know it.
573rd AAA Btn [Motorised] was an unremarkable anti-aircraft unit that had enjoyed a reasonably low risk and trouble-free war through to May.
This morning it made history.
For some time it had been known that the radar sets used to monitor low-level aircraft raids such as the ones 573rd was designed to repel had another unsuspected capability.
They could read mortar round trajectories and, by a relatively simple process calculate the point of origin of a round in flight.
Artillery had not been trackable, but today they tried a new combination of radar information and experienced artillery personnel using maps and good old intuition.
The batteries of 494th and 495th Artillery Battalions were locked and loaded, just waiting for the right coordinates to visit hell upon Stalin’s Organs and hopefully start hitting back heavily at one of the Soviets greatest assets; their artillery.
2nd Lieutenant Rodney W. Chambers watched as his operators did their work and he passed accurate data to the 494th’s Captain Maynard, seconded to the radar section.
Based on the number of tracks, the Captain’s decision was to put down a twelve round barrage from all forty guns on the location identified by the radar.
Twenty-six M7 Priests spat their 105mm HE shells in the direction of the fields west of Erlach.
Accompanying them were 155mm VT fused shells from M40 Gun Carriages, specifically for airbursts over the target designed to kill valuable artillerymen.
1st Regiment, 3rd Guards Rocket Barrage Division was an experienced unit and no strangers to combat casualties, having more than once picked up their rifles for closer combat work against the Germans, the last example of which had been the day before when they suffered seven wounded in a guerrilla attack outside of Estenfeld.
However, the casualties visited upon them on the morning of 10th August 1945 destroyed them as a fighting unit.
The men and women were struggling to reload their charges, humping around ninety-two pounds of high-explosive and propellant in rocket form, at sixteen reloads to a vehicle, twenty-three vehicles in total to be serviced, Mixed in amongst them were the ammunition trucks and the officers and non-coms, chivvying their crews into greater efforts.
American shells arrived and took lives by the dozen as shrapnel cut into bodies and explosive shells did their horrible work. Secondary explosions from rockets and vehicles added to the slaughter and, in truth, the final four salvoes did no great additional damage, as there was little left of note.
Every launcher was useless, ranging from unserviceable through to completely destroyed. Less than twenty personnel struggled through the smoking carnage recovering their wounded comrades. Given the previous evenings combat strength of two hundred and eight personnel, the maths suggested more dead and wounded than were actually recovered from the field.
The second part of the shoot was trickier and required judgement and intuition on the part of the experienced Artillery Officer attached to the 573rd.
Fi
g#15 - Reichenberg/Rottenbauer battleground.
As the 76.2mm shells continued to rain down on the churned ground in front of Goßmannsdorf, radar tracked as best it could. Artillery shells had a different type of trajectory, one not dealt with easily by the radar.
However, it did offer up enough information to get a flight direction and so the artillery officer waited for some input with a map and ruler.
Chambers carefully recorded the details and double-checked the results, not that he didn’t trust his Corporal.
Moving over to the Captain’s map table, he annotated it with a single line. Commencing at the point of shell arrival and departing in the direction indicated by the radar.
He then stood back and let Maynard do his part.
It took a few seconds before the Captain found what he looked for and he marked a simple X on Chambers contribution, in an area just off road north-east of Reichenberg.
Calling in the coordinates to his battalion, he could not help himself but check and recheck the possibilities.
The battery of guns he controlled fired four salvoes and a very satisfied Maynard noted the reduction and then cessation of shellfire on the now silent approaches to Goßmannsdorf.
The arrival of 105mm shells was a very unpleasant experience for the Soviet gunners. However, only a few fell close enough to do harm, killing four artillerymen and wounding two more.
None the less, the unit seemingly panicked and started to hitch up guns without proper orders, hence the lessening in incoming fire witnessed by Maynard and Chambers.
Losing only one gun and two prime movers, the battery withdrew in ragtag order, finally coming to a halt on the southern approaches to Würzburg, where the young Junior Lieutenant in charge was summarily executed by the NKVD officer who intercepted the withdrawing unit.