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Navigator Nielsen gave the pilot a southwest course to France where they could reach American lines and not have to bail out over enemy territory.  In 1944, Germany was a bad place for downed allied bomber crews.  Then things got worse, much worse.  The second engine failed.  A few minutes later, the third engine stopped running.  On the left wing, oil and fuel lines were damaged.  A P-51 Mustang fighter plane got the order to escort ”Liberty Run”.  It was around 11:45 am.  The Mustang escorted the bomber for the next 15 minutes.  The situation was drastic, but “Liberty Run” was still flying.  The crew began to throw all loose equipment out of the aircraft, to reduce the weight. “Liberty Run” lost more and more speed and altitude.  They continued another 95 miles or so, ascending and limping along on one engine down to about 2,000 feet.  Hundley saw Walker and Doyle at the controls fighting to keep the plane in the air.  Nielsen, anticipating that they might have to bail out, took off his insulated flight boots and put on his shoes.  Around 11:55 am, “Liberty Run” passed the town of Kassel.  The B-17 was sighted from a young woman who was working in this town, outside, on the top of a house.  She saw the aircraft and a lot of smoke behind it, moving slowly at a low altitude, with one wing up and the other down.  Then she heard a sound like thunder, a flak unit opened fire.

Around noon, near the village of Grossenritte, a few Kilometers southwest of Kassel, a heavy flak unit of the group ”Kurhessen” with twelve 88 mm, 105 mm, 125 mm cannons and several automatic AA-machineguns for closer range, had detected “Liberty Run” and pointed their guns at it.  This unit had the mission to protect the nearby important Henschel aircraft-engine-factory where Daimler-Benz aircraft engines for the German Luftwaffe were produced.  It was also a part of the flak ring of Kassel. (Note: Kassel had a flak ring from more then 200 heavy cannons, but these units could never completely stop the allied bomber fleets.  If British bombers arrived in the night, all units opened fire on them.  The smaller AA-machinegun units on the top of the buildings sent their bullets way up into the sky, but the soldiers knew that they could not hit the targets; the altitude of the bombers was too high.  The former flak soldiers reported that this was good for the morale of the residents, if they saw the tracer ammunition in the dark sky and heard the thunder of the bigger cannons.  Night fighters shot down most of the bombers in night-time raids who were lost over this territory).