Issue 7.12
During world war two, I was a crew member on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber flying from our base in England on bombing missions into Germany. During the days we didn’t fly a mission, we had ground school, gunnery practice, German language lessons, how to avoid capture if shot down in enemy territory and intelligence briefings. During one of those intelligence briefings two P-S1 pilots came to our bomber base to talk to us about tactics. After the session, we gunners engaged with the P-S1 pilots in an off the record bull session during which the two fighter pilots told us of an interesting operation that they took part in.
The Gestapo, the German Nazis’ secret terror organization that had operations in Germany and in all the conquered and occupied countries was the topic of the pilot’s discussion. In each country the Gestapo kept the local population in control by constant fear. Among other duties, the Gestapo prevented the people from listening to the BBC, tracked down rumors about the underground, find, arrest and deport Jews and other groups of people to the death camps and find and capture downed allied flyers who were often hidden and then repatriated to fight again. In Copenhagen, Denmark the Germans craftily located their regional headquarters by taking over the entire seventh floor of a tall office building in the middle of the city. They knew the allies would never bomb that building because the rest of the building was filled with Danish offices and Danish workers. Also, bombing one building could not be done without inflicting great damage to the surrounding inner city area.
A daring plan was conceived that had to work. The task was assigned to an American fighter squadron. One bright Sunday morning in 1944 while the Danes were away from the building for the Sabbath, the squadron of fighters attacked with machine guns, cannon and rockets and cut that seventh floor out of that building. The building was attacked from all four sides. This was as close to a surgical operation that was possible during world war two.
Since that happened, I have never seen that very interesting event even mentioned in books, movies or documentaries. In recent years I have talked to Americans who emigrated from
Denmark after the war and they have verified my account. My friends were children when that happened.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.