Mission Reports 8th USAAF

[Henk Welting]

Who has access to the 8th USAAF Mission Reports for Monday 19th February 1945. I know that 163 P51s were involved in a sweep Hannover - Magedeburg - Braunschweig. Important to know whether it's reported that a train was attacked at Halberstadt.
Regards and thanks in advance for your help.
Henk.

[batura]

Henk,

If you find the units which took part on that days mission, you can get in contact with their historians and get the mission reports. However, keep in mind that it is not easy to get all the post mission reports of all the pilots. You will most probably get the main mission report for each squadron.

This process may seem too much complicated but it wont really take more than an hour to find the historians. Try littlefriends.com.

Thats what I have found about that day: "163 of 179 P-51s fly a fighter sweep against rail and road targets in the Hannover-Magdeburg-Brunswick area claiming 2-0-0 aircraft in the air and 1-0-0 on the ground; 5 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA)."

Good luck,

batur

[Henk Welting]

Thanks Batur. The five P51s lost came all down in NW.Germany. It is possible that same P51s attacked a PoW-train at Halberstadt (900 sick and injured PoWs on the transfer from camps in Oberschlesien to Camp XIB at Fallingbostel, NW.Germany), killing dozens of PoWs. The train consisted of cattle trucks without Red Cross or Hospital marking.
Regards,
Henk.