Research on dad takes son to the land he bombed Unearthing wartimes
In 2012, a 550-pound bomb, unearthed by a construction crew in Munich, Germany, and unable to be diffused, was detonated where it lay. The decision was made to explode it at night, which lit up the Munich sky and must have shaken some nerves. This was not a one-time thing.
Unexploded ordnance had been found in Dortmund, Giessen, Frankfurt, Kablenz and Cologne, too. Some 2.7 million tons of bombs were dropped on Europe by Allied powers between 1940 and 1945. Half fell on Germany and it is estimated that thousands never detonated. My father must have known this.
Thomas D. Fagan, who joined his family’s insurance business in Troy after the war, served in the Eighth Air Force as a tail-gunner on B-17’s in 1944-1945. I’d spent a good deal of time learning about his wartime exploits — talking with him, traveling to Bassingbourn, England, where he’d been stationed, and to Germany in 2015 and 2018. After he died in 1986, I corresponded with one of his crew members. Fred, a top-turret gunner and flight engineer, wrote that wherever they were, my father would “always find a place to shoot baskets,” and that “Pops, another crew member, would cut our hair before we went on leave to London.”
In Cologne, I scrolled through the 401st Squadron, 91st Bomb Group (Heavy), Eighth Air Force “dailies” — a detailed record of combat missions including targets, mission summaries, and crew names by airplane. In 1944, on Sept. 27 and again on Oct. 17, my father flew to Cologne from his base in Bassingbourn with other squadron aircraft to attack a “synthetic oil plant” and the “Kalk-nord Marshalling Yard.” He returned safely, as he always would.
In Berlin, Germany’s capital city was overcast. Up the street from my hotel stood the remains of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, destroyed by allied bombs. The 401st Squadron dailies included a mission to the city on Aug. 27, 1944, to attack a “JU-88 assembly plant.” The JU-88 was a twin-engined German combat plane. Because of bad weather, the lead group attacked another “target of opportunity at Helgoland.” The other groups were unable to drop bombs.
In Munster, I watched hundreds of university students ride through the medieval city on bicycles. Dad had been there Oct. 27, 1944, to “attack the Aircraft Repair Works of Ludwig Hanson.” The dailies revealed that “Flak at the target was meager to moderate and inaccurate. Fighter support was good.”
Missions to Ludwigshaven, Stuttgart, Brunswick, Meresburg, Aachen, Hanover, Kassel, Osnabruck and others revealed an all out effort by the Eighth to destroy submarine and shipyards, tank-part factories, railroads, bridges, airdromes, engine factories, synthetic oil plants and Germany’s ability to wage war.
Frankfurt’s skyscrapers evidenced its reputation as a European financial center. But the dailies told another story, that things there hadn’t always been so prosperous. On Dec. 11, 1944, the 401st and other squadrons attacked the city’s “main Marshalling Yards….(anti-aircraft) fire was meager and inaccurate for our group.”
Munich was bathed in sunshine. Though there is no record of my father bombing that city, the dailies reported that on April 21, 1945, just weeks before the German surrender, the 401st “dispatched 12 aircraft and crews to attack the Furstenfeldbruck Airdrome west of Munich. Due to weather the city of Munich was attacked by means of instruments with unobservable results.” By then, the cradle of the Third Reich had been attacked from the air more than 70 times and German resistance had weakened. “Moderate barage and meager tracking anti aircraft fire before bombs away was experienced in the target area,” noted the dailies.
I left Germany from Hamburg. My father had been over the city Nov. 6, 1944. “Bombing by the lead and high squadrons was done by means of instruments with results unobserved. The low squadron had a partial visual run. Anti-aircraft fire was moderate and accurate. Fighter support was good.” All returned safely.
The B-17s Dad flew on had nicknames: Qualified Quail, Happy Valley Express, USA The Hard Way, Sunkist Sue, Heats On, Madame Shoo Shoo and Broad Minded. I read about them flying over the English Channel, a tourist during peacetime. How different Dad’s trips had been. And I read that on May 7, 1945, in Bassingbourn, “...all personnel of the field gathered on the parade square in front of the consolidated Mess Hall at 1100 Hours. The Group CO, Col. Terry, then announced that the Germans had accepted unconditional surrender and that the next day would be officially declared VE Day. Quite a bit of celebrating seemed to be done that night.”
Earlier that year, my father had been in Scotland on R&R where he was offered the opportunity to see the Firth of Forth and rotate to the western Pacific to drop more bombs on Japan. He declined the latter offer. Dad sailed home on a ship, seasick most of the way, he recalled, dropping cigarettes through the wire mesh to the German POWS held below.
Sean Fagan was born and raised in Troy and now lives in Florida.