"Stille Nacht" by Franz Xaver Gruber and Joseph Mohrthe, sung by the Vienna Boys Choir

"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, sung by Jeff Buckley

485th BG bomb run at smoke-obscured Blechhammer South.

 

December 26 mission plan plots a right-ward turn to Stodoll after Bombs Away.

Butch's right turn plotted against a clear reconn photo.

Butch's right turn AS IT HAPPENED. This is the real-time mission photo.

As their bombs hit the ground, the formation was well into its rightward turn to exit the target zone.

Taken high overhead by a P-38, this mission photograph captured incredible details. Zoom in at high resolution, and the long B-24 wings look like silver stripes. Web and screen resolutions reduce this clarity to faint smudges.

Butch's bomb group flies over the Reigersfeld flak battery. Those dots are American B-24s.

Butch is hit

Butch had only dropped one bomb rack at "bombs away." The other side was stuck. Joe Lajkowicz was the nose gunner and armaments officer. His duty called for him to scramble onto the I-beam spanning the yawning bomb bay to kick at the stuck bombs. When the flak shell exploded in Butch's waist area, Joe fell from the open bomb bay and landed in the fields close to Alex and Mike.

Butch broke in two. The tail tumbled down. The wing and fuselage arced forward and then spun. Some crew members were thrown clear. An engine sheared off and landed in the gravel pit. The front spiraled into the electricity wires at tower #4 and burned. Then, Butch’s remaining stuck bomb exploded.

Butch's tail landed in Sackenhoym village.

75 years later, LIDAR image shows Butch's front section crash scars in the soft watershed earth.

Blechhammer South electricity and tower were destroyed.

December 26 mission photo; electricity corridor in 2016.

German military response was immediate.

Butch's wreckage was hauled to the train track and transported to Auschwitz. Butch's second-to-last contribution to the war effort was to supply work to Birkenau prisoners who worked at Zerlegebetriebe airplane salvage shed. This higher-purpose indoor job, guarded by Luftwaffe not SS, increased their survival odds. Butch's last contribution? Recycled into German war material ... So it goes.