The Final Mission By April 25, 1945, the war in Europe was all but over. Only weeks earlier, the Hummel crew had survived the horrors of Operation Varsity. They had watched friends die, crash-landed behind enemy lines, been captured, rescued, and somehow found the strength to climb back into the cockpit. Their final documented combat mission had come just five days earlier over Schwandorf, where they unknowingly completed what appears to have been their last mission together.