On the 79th Anniversary of the Kassel Mission, James Baynham Can Still Tell His Story

On the 79th anniversary of the Kassel Mission, our lone survivor James Baynham can still tell the story as if he were 20 something years old. He shared this a week ago with those on his email list. Remarkable man!

Thank you James for still representing all those fine young men! Your telling of their story keeps them all alive in spirit…

Jim Bertram
KMHS

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A week from today, 79 years ago today, the 445 BG, made up of B-24 Liberators, flew toward Kassel, Germany to destroy some Wehrmacht Truck Factories. Before the group passed its initial point, final point of the bomb run, its lead ship led it off course when it made an eighteen degree turn to the left. There were pilots on the air immediately, questioning the move. To no avail. The Leader of the group in the lead ship ordered everyone to continued behind the command ship. The seemingly obvious error must be mitigated by everyone’s knowledge that our command ship always had a couple of extra navigators in it.  They surely had the right information.

So thirty B-24s queue up, opened their bomb bay doors, and headed for what would be the wrong target. Barely a few minutes went by before the entire force of Luftwaffe Fighters throughout the area taxied out, took off and formed up in long, formidable lines Behind and slightly below the bombers and began firing explosive cannon shells into our bomb group. Since we had left the protection of our Fighters when we made that left turn, we were completely defenseless. Four enemy passes and six short minutes later, twenty five B-24s with 300 young airmen manning them, were destroyed. 118 young guys would be dead, the rest would soon be in POW Stalags in Germany until May of next year.  

In only a few minutes the skies would clear as wreckage settled to the earth over the Seulingswald Forest and nature began the long years of attempt to cover the carnage with new growth. That , of course, did happen. Today there is a beautiful five acre park, deep inside the massive forest, where flowers bloom and large boulders bear bronze plaques memorializing the dead from that day.

Every year on the 27th of September a group made up of German residents who lived through those brutal days, some tourists from America who come to honor their loved ones, German honor guards and bugle corps who salute the dead and produce the eerie sound of trumpets playing taps that echo through the forest, and various local officials of local towns throughout the area there to acknowledge that violent day that affected so many lives. And my memory relives the entire scene each year. The fresh young guys, my friends and crew members I served with and resisted the attack and failed to save our plane all bailed out. We made it! But four died after they safely landed when they were captured, tortured and shot. Two others, oddly, were treated humanely when Germans found them severely wounded and hospitalized them, cared for them for many months to insure they survived.

And here I am, 99 nine years old with this event still fresh in my mind. I’m the sole survivor of those 300. I’m still here with a sense of duty to chronicle the event so that even when i’m gone, there will always be a record those brave young men who gave their all, their lives and their future and the love that was theirs to claim.  God Bless them! They were genuine heroes!