TARGET: RAILWAY STATION
HALBERSTADT, GERMANY
8 APRIL, 1945

The railway station at Zerbst was the primary target. The 457th comprised the 94th C Combat Wing with Major Maguire as Air Commander. The Group assembled in Wing formation without difficulty and was in proper Wing and Division column position. Division assembly line was flown as briefed.

Over the Continent, the course was flown approximately as briefed. However, it was necessary to do a considerable amount of”S-ing” before reaching the Rhine, in order to stay in formation, because groups ahead were closely bunched. After crossing the Rhine, the Division formation straightened out and proper interval between groups was again obtained. During the second leg before the briefed IP, both primary and secondary targets were completely covered with an undercast. It was determined to bomb Halberstadt, the secondary target.

In order to avoid prop wash, an 1P was selected and the Group started a PFF run. Cloud coverage was about two tenths and the target area opened up sufficiently to allow a visual sighting to be performed. However, there was not sufficient time to split the Group into squadrons and consequently bombing was done in Group formation, with the lead aircraft performing the sighting. Some difficulty was experienced in identifying the target because of a dense layer of smoke caused by bombing of the preceding groups. The bombs were dropped from 20,000 feet. Bomb results were observed to be good, a pattern being centered in the target area.

Anti-aircraft fire was light and no aircraft sustained damage.