Traunstein — Railroad Marshalling Yard

Mission Narrative

April 18, 1945 — Carl's thirty-second and final combat mission. The target was the railroad marshalling yards at Traunstein, a town in southeastern Bavaria near the Austrian border. The 351st Bomb Group dispatched 30 aircraft, including H2X radar ships, but the weather cooperated: five-tenths cloud cover cleared enough for visual bombing, and bombardiers made direct sighting on the briefed aim point.

The lead aircraft was B-17G J-468 (serial 44-6610 — the same aircraft Carl flew). Takeoff was at 0915; landing at 1900. The bomb load was twelve 500-pound AN-M43 general-purpose bombs per aircraft. Photos showed the overall bombing results to be excellent — the only interference during the run was prop wash from the formation ahead.

It was a fitting end to Carl's combat tour: a well-executed mission with excellent results and minimal opposition, deep in the Bavarian Alps as the war ground to its conclusion. From his first mission to Ludwigshafen on September 8, 1944, to this final mission at Traunstein on April 18, 1945, Carl had flown 32 combat missions over seven months, survived two Berlin raids, the Battle of the Bulge, the Ruhr flak gauntlet, and the savage September air battles that cost the 351st some of its worst losses of the war. Germany surrendered three weeks later, on May 8, 1945.

Strategic Context

Traunstein's location in southeastern Bavaria, near the Austrian border, illustrated how far the war had progressed. In September 1944, Carl's targets were in the Rhineland and central Germany; by April 1945, the 8th Air Force was striking targets in the Alps. The remnants of the German government were retreating toward the "National Redoubt" — a feared (but largely mythical) fortress in the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. On the ground, Allied forces were closing in from all sides. Berlin was under direct assault by the Soviets. The last missions of the 8th Air Force were being flown against a dying regime.