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My Three Missions With the 461st by Ben Haller 767th Bomb Squadron Editor's Note: The following is the second half of the letter I
received from Ben Haller. My three missions with the 461st all were against marshalling yards in Austria in an effort to prevent retreating German troops from fleeing to Berlin through Linz, the Northern point of a triangle with Munich and Vienna. My diary shows the following: Mission #17 Date: 4/21/45 Position: #9 Target: Attnang-Puschiem M/Y I've never made a 360 over a target yet, but today we went over four times, then dropped our bombs one-half mile right of the marshalling yards, which could be seen for miles because of the flame and smoke in them. Such a lousy display of bombing I've never seen. Besides, we had ship #68, an airplane that just wasn't meant to fly. It wore Joe (Ballinger, our pilot, now deceased) to a frazzle. We were certainly disgusted. Mission #18 Date: 4/25/45 Position: #4 Target: Linz M/Y Such a bunch of turnbacks! (Not directed at 461st for this included many ships in various Bomb Groups of the Fifteenth, they were visible en route to the target and immediately prior to turning on the IP and who were turning back with "malfunctions".) I flew with another crew piloted by Yauger. One Squadron had so many turnbacks only two ships remained and had to tack on to another box. We lost two ships that way. Went past Munich, Salzburg, Berchtesgaden and saw plenty of M/Y's full up. We were briefed for about 187 guns, plenty to go around. As I recall, it was estimated there were actually 350 guns or more around Linz at target time because the Germans had rushed mobile flak guns in on flatbed rail cars and by truck from Munich and Vienna areas to protect the troops and trains en route North. In your December 1991, Vol. 8, No. 2 issue of The 461st Liberaider, John C. Haberman states in his article, starting on page 16, "Linz, if my memory serves, boasted something like 600 heavy anti-aircraft guns, in the hands of sharpshooters." I have no reason to doubt his report and, in fact, often thought the estimate of 350 guns was light in view of the damage inflicted on all of us. Our bombs (the 767th Squadron) walked across the briefed A.P. with a nice pattern. I had one bomb - 500#ers - hang up, so salvoed it on the rally. Found out from photos shown me by our S-2 officer that it hit a vital part of the benzol plant (strictly by accident!) that this Group had been trying to hit for months. (It was protected by very high, extremely thick walls, so my bomb was a freak that flipped out in a lucky arc before plunging straight down. S-2 gave me a copy of this photo, which I have in my files and is now yellowed with age.) One plane from our Group went down in a flat spin over the target, no chutes seen. A total of six ships from other Groups blew up out in front of us on a sea of flak - it was quite a bad day. On our field we had four crash landings. One man had his left gear shot off so came in with nose wheel only and made one of the finest landings to be seen anywhere. Your article from John Haberman, see above, tells the story firsthand, for that must have been his plane and pilot. There was one interesting addition, if that was the same crash landing. I didn't write this one in my diary, but I distinctly recall the crash on that field using nose wheel only. It seemed like everyone on the base was out there praying that guy in. Just at the touchdown, someone in the plane - presumably the engineer - popped parachutes out the waist windows, attached to the 50 caliber gun mountings there. It was a spectacular sight and the first time I had ever seen that technique used. Mission #19 Date: 4/26/45 Position: #1 Box. #7 Target: Linz M/Y The armies on all fronts have been driving ahead so fast we have few targets left. (We were allowed to bomb only primary targets or assigned secondary targets; absolutely no bombing on a target of opportunity.) This is a small yard just south of the Austrian border in the Alps. Our Primary, an ordnance depot, couldn't be seen because of low clouds. Linz had a cloud cover, too, so Col. Rogers, Group C.O., took us around three times, losing altitude until we could get underneath and bomb. In the second pass we were going down through clouds on the bomb run in formation. Result was a nice dispersal all over the sky. On the third time around we had a long bomb run at 12,000 feet, but the lead Bombardier (name deleted) missed by 800 feet and all our bombs fell into the river - wasted. We wound up bombing from #5 spot because of the break-up when we hit the clouds. My 2 May 1945 entry tells how the 5th and 8th Armies (U.S. and British) raced up both sides of Italy until they had the Germans cut off at the Brenner Pass. Part of that entry says: "The Po Valley was overrun in a week once the big Spring offensive started. In addition, Partisan troops took Fiume and forged along the coast to Trieste. In the meantime, the Russians went all out and after fierce street battling captured all of Berlin. The forces of General Bradley's 3rd Army met and linked with Russian armies to completely sever German lines. Mussolini was captured while escaping through Italy to Switzerland and was summarily shot by Italian Partisans who had captured Milan. Hitler's death is now reported but at the same time is being taken with a grain of salt despite authorization of the report coming from Himmler through Admiral Doenitz. All the world is now waiting for the great words that the German army in homeland has decided to surrender." "Rumors are floating roof high as to our immediate disposition but the only thing definite is a letter from General Arnold that all the Fifteenth Air Force, with the exception of an occupational Air Force, will be returned as soon as possible to the States for leaves and furloughs, then sent, after proper training, to the Pacific War against Japan. My fingers are crossed." My diary entry of 8 May 1945 says: "Admiral Doenitz, succeeding Hitler, who is supposed to have died in Berlin, unconditionally surrendered all German Army, Navy and Air Force units still in action as of 0001, 9 May. Some German troops in front of the Russian machine in Czechoslovakia pulled a sneak air raid on Prague after the surrender was in effect. Russians have identified Hitler's body. Goering and Field Marshall Kesselring have been taken into custody." On 9 May there was a call for volunteers to fly cargo missions to drop supplies to Allied POW camps in Austria. The purpose was not only to get food and medical supplies to these people as fast as possible, but also to arm them so they (both British and American soldiers) could officially be in charge of their camps and adjoining towns before the Russians could race in and claim they had "liberated" our people. My diary shows I flew on 5/9 to the Americans held in the German prison camp at Spittal, Austria, northwest of Villach. Dropped twelve 350# cans of supplies from 1,000 feet. Flew over the most beautiful country, mountains and lakes I've ever seen. Went over Klagenfurt where nothing is left intact. What a mess. The POW's waved wildly from barracks roofs and out in the roads. On 10 or 11 May I flew another one to Wolfsberg POW camp where the English fellows are. Saw streams of German trucks, guns and carts for miles pouring in to surrender to the Allied troops in this area. Dropped from 800 feet. I failed to make an entry for 16 May for my third and final Cargo Mission, which was excusable because when I returned to my tent in the 767th Squadron area there was a cablegram on my bunk informing me that our first child, Benjamin III, had been born at 12:15 a.m. 9 May just 14 minutes after the official surrender took place! I can't recall the name of the POW camp but it was again in southern Austria, near the Villach and Klagenfurt area. The volunteer crews carried no gunners, of course, although I think a few guys were allowed to ride strictly as passengers to see from low level the landscape we'd been bombing from high altitude and to be able to say they took part in those historic flights that meant little to anyone else, but everything to the POW's on the ground. Within two weeks, our Group had been processed and sent to Gioia, Italy as the staging area for flying our planes home via Africa and South America. Gioia had been the staging area where we had been processed when entering Italy, and it was from there we were sent to the 376th Bomb Group at San Pancrazio down in the heel of Italy. The batch of planes we were assigned with departed Italy on 31 May and we flew singly across the Sahara to Dakar on the west coast, then across the South Atlantic to Natal, Brazil, around the coast line of Brazil until we hit Georgetown, British Guiana, (where the infamous massacre of religious followers took place about ten years ago), up to Borinquen Field in Puerto Rico, then to Charleston, S.C. After two days there we were sent home by broken down trains for 30-day leaves before reporting to Sioux Falls Air Base at Sioux Falls, S.D., where we stayed until being separated in October 1945. Ben Haller, Jr. Bombardier |
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