Flying Blind

By late February 1945, the Hummel crew was still new to combat—only sixteen days into their flying experience together. Halle marked their sixth mission as a crew, each one teaching them more about the unrelenting pace of the air war over Europe. The skies might have seemed quieter now, with the Luftwaffe nearly broken, but danger still lingered in every turn toward the target.

The morning of February 27 began early, with briefings between 0415 and 0530 hours. The target: the railroad marshalling yards at Halle, a major junction in central Germany. By 0730, the first B-24s were rolling down the runway at Wendling, engines rumbling through the cold English air.

Because the target lay hidden beneath a thick overcast, bombing was done by H2X radar—a method known as “blind bombing.” The crews never saw the city below, only the glowing green radar scopes guiding their release points. In total, 464 bombs—a mix of 250-, 300-, and 500-pounders—were dropped through the clouds. Results were unobserved.

No enemy fighters appeared that day, and flak was meager and inaccurate, though even inaccurate fire had a way of finding metal. The Hummel crew in #118 landed safely at Woodbridge with a flak hole in the #1 engine. Upon inspection, it was believed to have been from an earlier mission—proof that scars of past flights often lingered longer than they knew. They safely landed in Wendling the following day.

Aboard #901, Engineer S/Sgt Kedenburg suffered glass fragments in his eyes, the result of shattered cockpit glass—a reminder of how quickly calm could turn to chaos.

Elsewhere, 2/Lt Majesky’s crew in #906 ran low on fuel and diverted across the Channel to airfield B-59, only to discover no gas was available. They continued on to B-50, then B-53, where it was determined that faulty gauges were to blame for the scare—and that they had, in fact, carried enough fuel all along to make it home. They finally made it back to Wendling by noon on February 28.

For Hummel’s men, Halle was another test—not of skill, but of nerves. They were still learning the rhythm of missions: the early wake-ups, the tension before takeoff, the endless hours above the clouds where sight and sound blurred into habit. The war might have been nearing its end, but for them, it was just beginning to take shape.