Americans fly 2,600 miles, raze Austrian plane plant
Messerschmitt factory hidden away near Vienna reported left in mass of blazing ruins
By Henry T. Gorrell, United Press staff writer
Cairo, Egypt – (Aug. 14)
Scores of U.S. Liberator bombers flew some 2,600 miles across the Mediterranean and Southern Europe yesterday to drop more than 350,000 pounds of explosives on the big German Messerschmitt airplane plant 30 miles south of Vienna, which the returning airmen said was left “a flaming shambles.”
Today’s accounts of the record-breaking raid – it was one of the longest of the entire war – said a telling blow was struck by the big fleet of Liberators at a vital factory believed to turn out about one-third of Germany’s entire Messerschmitt production.
The Berlin radio said today that Allied bombers “attempted a raid on Naples in the early evening hours of the day.” Details of the broadcast recorded by CBS were inaudible.
A communiqué announcing that the long-range U.S. bombers had carried their war to Austria for the first time said all of them had been “accounted for” – an apparent indication of small losses.
The Liberators planted their bombs squarely amidst the factory buildings and hangars of the Messerschmitt plant at Wiener Neustadt, official reports said. Scores of their heavy bombs were seen bursting among 400 fighter planes parked in neat rows on the ground.
The raid, a more extended venture than the Liberator bombardment of the Romanian oil fields, was believed here to have cut deeply into the Nazi aircraft production potential. The Wiener Neustadt plant was reported to assemble Me 109s at the rate of 400 a month.
Joseph W. Grigg, United Press correspondent formerly assigned to Berlin, said the plant employed several thousand workers in four or five big assembly units. When he visited it about two years ago, the plant was turning out about 30 planes a week.
Wiener Neustadt was also described as one of the largest advanced air-training schools in Germany. The plane was opened in 1940.
Cloud opens
2nd Lt. Everett E. Segeant of Brookline, Massachusetts, bombardier in the lead plane of his formation, reported:
Going in to the target there was a complete cloud cover. This was very disheartening, but just as we started over the bomb run there was a hole through which we socked the target smack in the center.
We laid our eggs right where they belong, including some among hundreds of fighter planes on the ground that looked as though they just came off the assembly lines.
All Europe vulnerable
Wiener Neustadt is 200 miles south of the deepest point of penetration into Axis Europe from Britain, demonstrating that no point in Greater Germany is immune from air attack.
The pilots were briefed by Brig. Gen. Uzal G. Ent of the 9th Air Force Bomber Command, who was highly pleased with the result.
Gen. Ent is a former Pittsburgher who almost lost his life in balloon race at Bettis Field. His wife, the former Eleanor Marwitz, and her 9-year-old son, are visiting her mother, Mrs. Minnie B. Marwitz, 419 N Craig St.
The mission required slightly more than 12 hours. The tired pilots were served hot coffee and doughnuts by American Red Cross girls on their return.