The April 10th issue of the Korea Herald has a curious listing on its “Today in History” section:
World
1945: German Me 262 jet fighters shoots [sic] down 10 U.S. bombers near Berlin
Germany’s Me-262 “Sparrow”
I lived in Berlin for six months. I’ve sometimes wondered what it was like to be there in April of ’45. But my real question is: Why would a detail of the action of WWII, like this, qualify for anyone’s “Today in History”?
Some googling leads me to several possible answers: (1) The Me-262 was the world’s first jet aircraft, (2) losing ten bombers on a single day may have been a very high one-day loss, (3) maybe whoever chose this factoid simply wanted to note that the Germans still had it together enough at such a late date to manage to shoot down ten in one go-’round
On #2: According to this, the U.S. 8th Air Force, which flew bombers against Germany, lost 4,145 bombers in the war.
The 8th flew Mission #1 on 17 August 1942 when 12 B-17s attacked Rouen Marshalling yards and the last mission on 8 May 1945 Mission #986, when 12 B-17s dropped leaflets in Germany.
If the USA lost 4,145 bombers in the time period above-delineated, that comes to 4.2 bombers lost per day. Losing ten on one day (April 10th, ’45) is not particularly dramatic. Again according to this, the highest single-day bomber loss was in 1943, when 60 were lost in one day.
Hi! Someone in my Myspace group shared this website with us so I came to check
it out. I’m definitely enjoying the information. I’m book-marking and will be tweeting this to
my followers! Wonderful blog and wonderful design and style.
[Kept for posterity because this spam was featured in Post-414. –Peter.]