General LeMay sat at the head of the long table and looked down it to General Johnson, CiC of the 14th Combat Wing, 8th USAF. “Well Leon, what did your boys do yesterday? And how high was the tab?” Curtis LeMay growled.
General Johnson rose, cleared his throat and looked the rest of the assembled Generals in the eye. “It was a clear victory for us, although a costly one. We absolutely smashed the target. For over 30 minutes our bombers pounded it into a pile of bricks and pipe. They won’t be making any more synthetic oil from that plant. As a matter of fact some of our bombers arrived to see nothing worth hitting, so they dropped on other targets of opportunity.”
The General to his left looked sideways at Johnson, “That’s great Leon, but give us a few more details. Our fighter crews said it was some of the hottest action they’d ever been in.”
“Well, yes, apparently that’s right. The Luftwaffe must have dragged every spare pilot away from the Russian front and stuffed them into some of their best fighters. They threw everything at us, Messerschmitts, Focke-Wulfs, even some of those new jets and a fighter we’ve never even seen before. Very fast at very high altitudes.”
“Our lead fighters reported high German scouts over the ocean, then they were hit as soon as the bombers and their lead escorts were over land. The first wave of Germans were over 30,000 feet, new Focke-Wulfs and they took some of the starch out of the Jug pilots. We also started losing B-17s. But, the Germans had to come down to fight us and that’s when our boys started to score on them too. The Mustangs and Jugs did a damned fine job getting at the Luftwaffe and tying them up before they could get to the bombers. Over the target there was no opposition. Of course, the gunners on board the bombers reported shooting down more German fighters than is in their entire inventory…”
At Kassel “Pips” Priller was sitting with his head thrown back onto the overstuffed leather of a chairback. He was exhausted from the day’s action and knew that he still had hours of paperwork to do. Just trying to explain to the brass how many men they had lost to the Americans would be hardest. They just didn’t understand, you couldn’t throw ex-bomber or green-horn pilots into a fighter and take on experienced foes like the Americans. Sure many of the German fighters were superior to the P-51 and the P-47, but only in the hands of an experienced fighter pilot. And, there was the matter of sheer number of fighters they had to get through only to face the massed heavy armament of B-17s. They called them Flying Fortresses for a very good reason. He raised his head, downed what remained of his schnapps and rose stiffly to his feet. A surviving Leutnant from his jagdgeschwader walked into the room, stared at Priller then at the empty seats in the ready room. He gestured feebly with one arm, indicating the empty seats but said nothing. “Don’t worry”, Pips said, “some of them will be back by tomorrow. It isn’t as bad as it looks right now.”
LW: 58 kills 49 deaths
USAF: 71 kills, 52 objects, 37 deaths
Thanks to iceMaw and Jordi for CO'ing the frame, and to Innomin8 for Setup CM.
