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The unit near the village Grossenritte was not placed on the nearby hilltop, so it was hard to detect by any aircraft.  Some of the soldiers behind the guns were in their teens and went to school.  As the soldiers of this unit detected the “Liberty Run” they must have thought about Kassel, which was destroyed by British bombers and mighty firestorms a year earlier.  In October 1943, more than 10,000 residents of this town were killed, (Note: nearly all of them were civilian); thousands were wounded, and many residents of this town lost their homes.  The survivors never forgot this terrible night.  (Note: British bombers came mostly in the night and dropped their bombs and air-mines very often on the city centers.  They blew the top of the houses away with mines and bombs and burned the rest with firebombs to ashes.  With this bombing, they tried to break the morale of the residents and factory-workers.  The British RAF called it “morale bombing”, but these are only other words for “area bombing” and it was terrible for the area residents.  They also destroyed the Edertalsperre, a big dam a few Kilometers west of Kassel, in May 1943.  160,000,000 cm3 of water destroyed and damaged villages and houses, taking lives all along the rivers.  The British felt that the German bombing of London during the Battle of Britain justified this action against civilian targets.  American leaders argued against the idea, but the British persisted.  American bombers attacked mostly in the daytime and tried to hit more or less strategic targets like factories, railroad stations, airports or other military targets.  Very often, clouds covered the targets, strong winds were blowing, or navigation errors happened and the bombs missed the factories and hit the villages, forests, meadows or fields near the bigger towns.)

In the following months, Allied bombers attacked Kassel again and again. (Note: The first raid against this town was in June 1940, the last in March 1945. Allied bombers flew 40 missions with more than 6,600 bombers against this town. They dropped 18,000 tons of all kind of bombs and mines on this city).  Now, here was a big chance for the Grossenritte flak crew to down one of these aircraft. (Note: Some of the residents of the surrounding villages thought that this aircraft had come from a raid against Kassel, but no one of Walker’s crew ever did fly a mission against this town).

Lt. Beers called the Pilot and told him to fly around this village, because he had located several flak guns nearby, but it was too late, they were detected.  “Liberty Run” passed very closely this flak unit and the tragedy began.

Suddenly, unbelievable loud thunder fills the air as all weapons of this Grossenritte flak unit opened fire on the aircraft and filled the air with bullets, shells, red-hot steel and dark flak clouds.  Residents of this village arrived at the flak area to see what was going on and what happened next.  Bullets found their way into the aircraft.  The co-pilot Lt. Doyle was hit by a bullet in his head and was killed. Other bullets damaged the parachute of S/SGT Henry C. Mathis Jr.  The aircraft got shaken by the nearby explosion of the flak shells and was dancing up and down.  Meanwhile, the Plexiglas nose was completely destroyed, 3–4 feet of the left wing tip was shot off and the horizontal stabilizer (tail assembly) had been riddled.  It was 12:07, and the end was coming very soon.  Suddenly the plane went into a left spin.  According to German eyewitnesses: ”The bomber flew very slowly, like in slow motion and came from the direction of Kassel at a low altitude.  The plane was not sighted earlier, and suddenly it was there.  The flak crews were also surprised.  They had to estimate very quickly the distance, speed and altitude of the plane before it was too late.  In the beginning of the battle, the twelve cannons missed the plane again and again.  The flak crews fired the guns as fast as possible to down the aircraft and the sky around the plane was full of black flak clouds.”  The people, who saw this, said that the plane had a good chance to escape.  In the very last moment, before “Liberty Run” disappeared behind the hills and forests, it got hit terribly.

Ironically, if the plane would have escaped behind the hills and followed its southwest course, it would have passed the town of Fritzlar, which is not far away from the crash area.  Fritzlar had an air base in 1944.  The Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 had fighter planes on the airport of Fritzlar in 1944. “Liberty Run” had never had a real chance to reach France with three damaged engines.  The fact that they were at such a low altitude was all that prevented them from being picked up on German radar.  At the same time, officials of the nearby town Gudensberg got the note that a burning aircraft was sighted not far away.  There was also a note sent to the Luftwaffen-Office-Command of the airport Kassel-Rothwesten, but the Ortsgruppenleiter of Gudensberg got the information too.  A wing was blown off of the plane and “Liberty Run” began to rotate on its axis.  Navigator Nielsen knew that all was lost, and got on the intercom and told the crew “We need to get out of here!”.  At this point, they were roughly seven miles southwest of Kassel.  There was no response from the ”office”, the flight deck where the pilot and co-pilot were located.  No warning lights, or any response.  Meanwhile, the aircraft was riddled with holes and on fire.  The fire was rapidly spreading and the aircraft was at a very low altitude.  Henry C. Mathis Jr., Walter L. Hundley, Albert J. Lunday and James W. Sublett opened the large door of the waist section to bail out.  Arthur L. Reckert’s exit was a door in the tail section.  They all bailed out with parachutes.