The Kassel Cassettes
an audiobook on
CD
On Sept. 27,
1944, thirty-five B-24 bombers flew off course and were ambushed by more than
100 German fighter planes.
The bombers had lost their fighter
protection, and were easy targets for the swarming Fokke-Wulf 190s and
Messerschmitt 109s.
Not that they
were defenseless. Each B-24 Liberator was heavily armed with .50-caliber machine
guns, which were blazing away.
The battle lasted,
according to most accounts, no more than six minutes, by which time the cries of
"Mayday" over the radio drew the cavalry in the form of the P-51s of the 361st
Fighter Squadron.
By the time it was all
over, 25 bombers were shot out of the sky. Many of the German fighters were shot
down and one American fighter pilot was killed. Of the ten remaining Liberators,
three crash-landed in Allied-occupied Europe, two reached an emergency landing
base in Manston, England, one overflew the group's base and crash-landed five
miles away, and only four made it back to the base at Tibenham, England.
Aaron Elson began interviewing survivors
of the battle after visiting a monument in Germany with the names of every
American and every German killed in the battle. The monument, built by the
Kassel Mission Memorial Association with the help of German historian Walter
Hassenpflug, is a rare and powerful testament to closure between former enemies.
"The Kassel Cassettes" on MP3
CDs includes more than 20 hours of interviews with pilots, tail gunners,
bombardiers, navigators, prisoners of war, and a widow and two sisters of fliers
killed in the battle.
These are MP3 CDs and will not play
on most CD players or in older vehicles. Many newer cars have CD players that
also play MP3 files, and they will also play on computers and CD players that
specifically say they play MP3s. There are four MP3 CDs in the set. The
interviews are also available in a set of regular discs that will play on any CD
player, but the set contains more than 20 CDs and is considerably more
expensive.
The following a sampling of tracks
from the set which will provide an overview of the battle.
