

 

Schweinfurt

For the rest of  the tide of the war in the air would ebb and
flow dramatically. Aided by new tactics and electronic equip-
ment, Göring’s pilots would have temporarily crippled the
RAF’s night-bombing offensive by the winter of –; but
simultaneously the Americans began throwing precision raids by
day deeper into Germany.
For the defense of the Reich Göring had stationed , of
the formidable -millimeter flak guns and nearly , light
flak guns. The flak gunners had claimed by the end of Septem-
ber  no less than , enemy planes, the fighter pilots
, more. Over one hundred thousand German civilians had
been killed by the Allied bombing, however, and there was an air
of desperation in the streets. In mid-September a glider pilot
who had survived Eben Emael and Crete volunteered to form a
suicide squadron of men willing to hurl old Junkers  bombers
packed with high explosives into the midst of American bomber