The events of March 18, 1944 in the Air Space Over "Hardt" in the Black Forest, Germany, as witnessed by Johannes Storz, who resided at Hugswald 99, Hardt bei Schramberg, Germany until 1952. His current address is Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

It was a wintry day with bright sunshine and about 2 feet of snow on the ground. The conditions and the weather were ideal for skiing. I was twelve years old and lived in the village of "Hardt" on our farm with my parents, brothers and sisters, and attended the Oberschule or high school in "Schramberg" where I had been studying English for two years.

Hans (left) and his brother on 18 March 1944

On this sunny Saturday, March 18, 1944 wave after wave of Liberators or B24s or other bombers emerged on the horizon to the west of our farm, and they flew straight east towards the "Schwaebische Alb", and out of sight in the distant horizon. They flew in intervals in convoys of 40 to 50 bombers. There usually were 4 to 6 bombers across the formations and 8 to 10 of these rows followed one another. The inbound flights began around 12:00 and continued for about an hour or longer. Altogether there may have been over 1,200 Liberators or Flying Fortresses that were involved in this air raid. Occasionally I could see smaller fighter planes to either side of these bomber formations as protective escorts.

The bombers returned between 2:30 and 3:00 in the afternoon. They emerged in the east and flew on to the west over the mountains of the Black Forest. Again, they were bunched in waves of 40 to 50 in one formation. Towards the end of their return flights the intervals between formations became longer. One formation emerged that consisted of about 30 four-engine bombers with the characteristic tail sections of Liberators. The bombers were flying at an altitude of about 3,000 meters. They did not have any fighter protection, but I could see all of a sudden that 3 or 4 small fighter planes streaked down on them from higher altitudes. With the emergence of the small fighter planes, many of the bombers in this formation started to fire guns; I could see thin streaks of fire coming from different parts of the bombers. As a result four of the planes started to spit smoke and dropped below the formation and then began to fall out of the sky. I recall one Liberator tumbling head over tail away from the formation, another one veered off and lost altitude and then exploded in a ball of fire in the sky at half the previous altitude. Prior to the explosion, I could see that airmen jumped out of the plane and some parachutes opened. A third bomber hit the ground intact and burst into a ball of fire in the vicinity of the neighboring village "Mariazell". Another plane separated from the formation and flew eastward constantly losing altitude and speed. Smoke from the engines trailed as it slowly flew towards the direction of "Rottweil", our county seat. All of a sudden it tipped over and fell, cockpit first, straight to the ground.

Hans Storz photograph, 18 March 1944

Church tower at Mariazell October 1996

We were watching all this from the front of our farmhouse. Suddenly, I saw a parachute falling down in front of the house. About 200 yards further away fell a leather bomber jacket that burned as it sailed from the sky. Another parachute was visible towards the west of our farm. One could see that an airman was coming down on the fully deployed parachute. This airman touched the ground about 2 kilometers from our farm in an area called "Oberhardt."

My brother and I collected the parachute that had fallen in front of our house. The lines of the parachute were charred because it caught fire as it deployed, and the airman fell about 2 km in the distance. We carried the leather jacket and the partially burned parachute to the "Buergermeisteramt" or City Hall of our village, "Hardt". Our Mayor, Gregor Haberstroh, who was a World War I veteran and had lost his left arm in the war, was in the office with an American airman who wore his flight outfit with big boots. He had brown hair and appeared to me as a very tall man. The Mayor did not speak English. I knew some English from my two years of studying English in high school, but my command of English was limited. We began a halting conversation. The airman asked me: "Where are they going to take me?" I did not have any idea about the POW camps in the region. I asked him, "Which town did you bomb?" He evaded this question. He evaded this question. Later on we learned that the targets were the aircraft factories in the city of Friedrichshafen and other towns on Lake Constance. I also asked him, "From which state in the U.S. are you?" I recall he may have mentioned Indiana or Pennsylvania, but I am not absolutely sure about this. I noticed that they had checked the airman for weapons and other possessions. On a table in front of him were several chiclets-type chewing gums, candies and some other personal possessions. He wanted to offer me some of the chewing gum, but the Mayor told me not to accept.

S/Sgt. Chester C. Strickler 1944 (England)

Chester C. Strickler 1993 (California)

More people came to the center of the village, and they asked the airman to go to the "GasthofKreuz" across the street from City Hall. I went over there with him where a crowd of 30 to 40 people had gathered. Some went into the restaurant with the airman, and the "Gastwirt" or owner of the restaurant offered him a beer. The son of the restaurant owner was Erich Haberstroh. He was a school friend of mine in the same grade, and he joined in the English conversation with the airman. At this time Dr. Helmut Junghans, the well-known local industrialist, arrived in a car. He was obviously in charge of air defense matters because he was the director of a large watch factory in Schramberg. This factory manufactured components of timing devices for bombs and torpedoes and other weapons during the war years. Dr. Junghans spoke English fluently. Part of his factory was called the "Hamburg Amerikanische Ubrenfabrik" (HAU) or Hamburg-American Watch Factory which had a branch in the U.S. Dr. Junghans talked with the airman and asked him if he would be willing to help search the airplane wreckage in a valley nearby for survivors of the air crash. This airplane had broken apart when it exploded in the air. The fuselage and the wings fell in the "Steinreute," very close to a farmhouse, almost on top of it, while the cockpit had come down in the area called "Tischneck," a kilometer further to the south. The airman was willing to help in the search of the wreckage. Different volunteers went to the crash site, but the undertaking was a dangerous one because ammunition continued to explode in the wreckage.

Hans Storz, with friends looking over wreckage in the garden at the Kopp farm

I stayed in the village for some time and noticed that adults had carried in some of the dead airmen and some were brought on a horse-drawn wagon. The bodies of the airmen were placed in front of the Fire Station that was converted to a morgue. I recall that I saw 6 bodies. The uniforms were all intact and did not appear to be burned. The watches on the wrists of the airmen were still running, and I saw one watch indicating the time of around 5:00 o’clock. The watch of one airman had a blue face, which I found interesting. These soldiers were the first dead people that I had ever seen in my life.

We gradually learned where the other three bombers had crashed. It was a wintery day with snow on the ground. On the following day, Sunday, March 19, 1944, I went together with my brothers on cross country skis to the next village Mariazell which is about 3 kilometers from our farm. Coming down the small hills I could see that the airplane had crashed into a snow covered pasture with a forest in the far distance about a kilometer southeast of the village. We skied to the crash site and found that the whole plane had fallen to the ground and then burned. The wings were still attached to the fuselage. The four engines of the bomber were ripped from the wings and were in the ground. The fuselage and the cockpit and the wings had burned, melting the metal at some sites, but the tail section had not collapsed. The tail rudders had a big "D" on the outside and the numbers 252465 that I recorded on photographs. I looked through one of the window openings and saw three charred bodies. They were close to windows on the floor of the fuselage. I could not distinguish the uniforms or the faces of these airmen. I had a simple box camera with me and 7 exposures on the film. I took four exposures of the crashed airplanes from different angles. I also took pictures of my brothers and one from the crash site in the direction towards the village of Mariazell which has a beautiful church with a round steeple in the Romanic style. It is a classic for the area as far as church architecture is concerned.

Photograph taken by Hans Storz at the Johnson crash site

I attended high school in the town of Schramberg which is 6 kilometers from Hardt. At that time public transportation was minimal, and we had to walk to school. On the way home from school in Schramberg, my school friends and I inspected the crash site of the airplane that had broken apart and hit the ground in the "Steinreute" and the "Tischneck" of Hardt. Not much could be seen of the fuselage and wings which were next to the farmhouse in the "Steinreute," but I found the cockpit of the bomber on the "Tischneck" quite interesting. It had not collapsed, and we could walk into the cockpit with all the instruments, control dials, colorful wiring, and large amounts of broken plexiglass. Rounds of ammunition were strewn throughout the wreckage. The dead airmen whom I saw at the morgue of our village Fire Station were the crew of this airplane. There was only one survivor, the airman with whom I talked in the Mayor’s office and in the "Gasthaus Kreuz." I wondered all along what happened to him.

We learned that one other airman survived from the crews of the four bombers that were shot down and crashed in our neighborhood. People were deeply concerned about the death of the young men of these bomber crews, but they also learned that the town Friedrichshafen, that was bombed, had hundreds of victims who died during this air raid on March 18, 1944.

March 18, 1944 was for us a sunny Saturday with clear skies filled with the roaring sounds of an armada of four-engine bombers. The conditions at this time in our part of the Black Forest had been peaceful and wholesome, but the harsh realities of the war literally fell into our neighborhood with these four bombers and their crews whose faces were as human as those of our relatives who had to serve and suffer in the war.

Mr. Jim Marsteller of New Park, Pennsylvania and Mr. Carsten Kohlmann of Sulgen, Germany gave me the name of Chester Strickler, the airman who survived the crash of his plane by parachuting to safety in our village. I had a most interesting conversation on the phone with him on Thursday, December 5, 1996.