Even a madman has to grow up somewhere, and for Adolf Hitler this was the Austrian city Linz. Hitler lived there from age 9 years in 1898 to age 19 in 1908, maturing into the dictator who moved on to Vienna, Munich and Berlin, from where he waged the war he believed would establish his Thousand-Year Third Reich. After victory, he had great plans for Linz…
Once he had conquered the world with his military genius, Hitler would retire to Linz and build a huge Führermuseum to house the many magnificent art treasures plundered from across defeated Europe. But when the United States Fifteenth Air Force launched its devastating bombing raid on Linz on April 25, 1945, Herr Hitler was in his dying days.
Four days later, April 29, he signed his last will and testament, and poisoned his beloved dog Blondi to test cyanide capsules. He and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide in his bunker under the Chancellery the next day. Berlin, wrecked, would fall on May 2 and the “Thousand-Year Reich” surrendered unconditionally on May 7. Linz capitulated to elements of George S. Patton’s Third Army on May 5 after seven years of Nazi rule in Austria’s third-largest city.
With the end of hostilities so near on April 25 (and in view of the title of this book), might it be tempting to think that Linz was singled out because it was Hitler’s hometown? (On the very same day, British Lancaster bombers escorted by American P-51 Aircraft from the 8th Air Force bombed the Berchtesgaden Obersalzberg area, particularly Hitler’s home, the Berghof.) In fact Linz was a legitimate target, one of the few remaining Nazi communications centres, its sprawling rail yards full of rolling stock with vital materiel for the German forces fighting their last-ditch battles. Thus it was heavily defended by fliegerabwehrkanone, or flak. Direct hits on bombers were unnecessary, flak creating a deadly cloud of shrapnel in their path.
Author Mike Croissant has penned what must be one of the best World War II books around. If you’ve never flown a bomber, half-frozen and scared stiff, through a storm of anti-aircraft fire turning the sky black, had shrapnel pierce your body, parachuted out of a burning plane to be shot at and beaten by bombed civilians, or had a belly-flop landing, well now you have.
And so, when the mission was revealed to the airmen of the United States 15th Air Force before dawn on the fateful day, there were audible groans and muffled expletives from the mixture of seasoned veterans and newcomers gathered for the briefing. American airmen flew 35 missions and then were returned home, and some men would be flying their final raid, knowing that there was a strong chance of death while so close to surviving the war.
A great many fliers had already perished since the capture of Italian airfields had allowed raids on targets in Austria and southern Germany. Croissant presents an impressive collection of first-person tales drawn on interviews with dozens of America’s remaining World War Two air veterans, archives and unseen accounts. Also, for the first time, he offers perspectives of ordinary Austrians, soldiers and civilians, caught up in the maelstrom on the ground.
The daylight raid would be an armada of 360 B-24 Liberators and 168 B-17 Flying Fortresses, with 200 fighters in escort. The heavy bombers were unheated and unpressurised. At eight kilometres high the temperature aboard could reach minus 65 Fahrenheit, and crews had heated felt shoes and gloves, a jumpsuit and leather flight jacket. But if a man’s oxygen supply was severed, death could quickly follow from anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain.
One Liberator had almost 100 holes blown in her, and such damage let in thin frozen air that could immediately cause extreme frostbite. A hole might be big enough for an escaping airman to jump through, then not inflate his parachute until far below where the air was thicker. An aircraft would be incapacitated if hydraulic and electrical cables were severed, and there was risk of explosion from the fuel and 500-pound high-explosive bombs.
Gunners were crammed for hours into icy turrets kept small to reduce aerodynamic drag, and needed heated suits. Beware of buttocks losing skin to frozen metal if defecating into a tin with a lid. Beware of frozen urine tubes, causing the urine to burst backwards. On an earlier raid by 400 bombers on Linz, aerial photographer Wayne W. White was in a B-24 struck by a 20-millimetre shell, and got shrapnel in the right hand and arm, and buttocks. When he took off a glove one finger stayed in there and another dangled by a piece of skin.
A raid was to tempt fate, a physical and mental challenge. Most American fliers were barely out of their teens. In a Germany short of manpower, its gunners were often even younger. More than a dozen bomb groups, each with dozens of heavy bombers, would face at least 164 anti-aircraft artillery guns against 110 on a raid there in March 1945. On the final run to the target no evasive action could be taken against the hellish flak that filled the sky.
As is recounted, the airmen had heard stories of angry civilians lynching crews who had parachuted out. Some of those floating to Earth were shot at from the ground. Less seriously, there could be jeers, abuse, spit and thrown objects. Linz’s rail yards burned and great damage was done, but in the city of 128,000 people, homes were destroyed and women and children killed too. A doctor might be forbidden to treat an injured airman, or refuse.
An airman who was rescued by Hungarian opponents of the Germans was abandoned to the hands of the oncoming Red Army. Instead of treating him as an ally, the Soviets suspected that he was a German spy and tortured him for days, whipping him and dangling him by his wrists. Finally he was sent to Odessa, where the authorities bizarrely insisted that he should have a feast in his honour with plentiful vodka if he promised not to reveal his mistreatment.
Some 20 kilometres from Linz the Nazis built a new concentration camp at Mauthausen, with a quarry where each Jew was loaded with a large stone and forced to run up 186 steps out of the pit. Sadistic SS guards also used dogs to tear apart inmates, tossed Jews into concrete mixers, injected their hearts with petrol, chased prisoners onto electrified fences and more.
The Jews began committing mass suicide, jumping into the quarry. Into this hell six surviving members of a downed US bomber were brought, and found the bodies of two others of their crew. Soon after, advancing American forces liberated the camp as Germany crumbled.
And so it continues in Croissant’s superlative account, with 16 pages of photos and lists of the brave crews. There is a host of vignettes about the men risking their all. When four crew bailed out just before their aircraft Mag Drop exploded in midair on the Linz raid, it was the last American bomber lost in combat in Europe in World War Two.
Visitors to Linz itoday can still find several landmarks associated with the city’s most infamous son. In the main square is the low town hall balcony from which Hitler addressed tens of thousands of Austrians on March 12, 1938. Other spots include his childhood home at Leonding on the edge of the city, his parents’ grave in the cemetery opposite, and the Landestheater where he and his friend August stood to enjoy one of his favourites, Wagner.
Mike Croissant’s uncle Ellsworth, his father’s brother, survived the war as a bombardier with United States Army Air Forces Crew 8431 but was killed in a plane crash with six others in the US soon after returning. Mike visited his grave in 2012 and made a silent promise to tell his story. In 2024 he returned with his completed book, mission accomplished in fine style.
Here is the heroism, patriotism and technical skill of the bomber crews. It is quite some tale.
