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The Rüsselsheim massacre was a war crime that involved the lynching and killing of six American airmen by townspeople of Rüsselsheim during World War II. The incident happened on August 26, 1944, two days after a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber of the United States Army Air Forces was shot down by heavy anti-aircraft fire over Hanover. All nine crew members of the aircraft (2nd Lt. Norman J. Rogers, Jr., pilot; 2nd Lt. John N. Sekul, copilot; F/O Haigus Tufenkjian, navigator and bombardier; Sgt. William A. Adams, nose gunner, S/Sgt. Forrest W. Brininstool, top turret gunner and flight engineer; S/Sgt. Thomas D. Williams Jr., radio operator; Sgt. William A. Dumont, belly gunner; Sgt. Sidney E. Brown, tail gunner; Sgt. Elmore L. Austin, waist gunner) parachuted to the ground, where they were captured and held by German Luftwaffe personnel. Unable to transfer the downed aircrewmen to a prisoner-of-war camp due to the train tracks being heavily damaged by bombing the night before, they forced the Americans to march through the devastated town of Rüsselsheim to catch another train. The townspeople, already angered by damage caused to their town by a Canadian bombing raid the previous night on the Opel automobile factory, which was manufacturing airplane parts during the war, attacked the unarmed crew members with rocks, hammers, sticks, and shovels, killing six of them. Background During World War II, Rüsselsheim, an industrial town that housed many key targets, including the Opel plant, was bombed several times by the Royal Air Force (RAF). The RAF followed a policy of "area bombing" of cities at night while the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) relied on "precision bombing" by day. British and American authorities found that at least 2,462 Allied airmen were known to have been lynched or abused by civilians in their occupation zones, of which 1,015 were killed. This figure is a low estimate, as it does not include those lynched in former eastern territories of Germany or the Soviet and French occupation zones. Furthermore, the British figure is relatively low despite their occupation zone being heavily bombed. The small number of trials conducted by the British suggests that the they lacked resources to carry through their work to completion. Shot down On the afternoon of August 24, 1944, an American B-24J-135-CO Liberator bomber, serial number 42-11107 and nicknamed Wham! Bam! Thank You Ma'am, commanded by 2nd Lt. Norman J. Rogers Jr, was seriously damaged by German antiaircraft fire while taking part in an attack on an airfield in Hanover and the entire crew bailed out near Hutterup. A lookout alerted both the local fire brigade and the military detachment at the nearby airfield and patrols were dispatched to find the downed Americans. One of the nine airmen, S/Sgt. Forrest W. Brininstool, had serious injuries to his abdomen. After landing on the farm, he was given first aid by an elderly couple and in return, Brininstool gave them his silk parachute, a valuable item for peasants. Within a few hours, most of the crew were captured by German personnel and taken into an interrogation room in the town hall in Greven. After that, most of the crew members, including Rogers, were taken to an air base near the town where they slept for the night. On the insistence of Rogers, Brininstool was taken to a medical clinic by German troops, where he was operated on for shrapnel wounds, then was moved to a hospital in Münster to undergo a second operation. The next morning, Brininstool still remained behind in the hospital while the others were loaded onto a train for a trip south to the Dulag Luft in Oberursel, north of Frankfurt. At every stop along the way, after German civilians noticed the Americans on the train, crowds would form at the windows, shouting in anger at the "terror flyers," shaking their fists, and spitting at them. On the night of August 25, the RAF sent 116 Avro Lancasters to Rüsselsheim in order to attack the Opel factory on a bombing mission, dropping 674 907 kg (2,000 lb) bombs and more than 400,000 incendiaries on the city, destroying the plant and damaging the railtracks, more by far than any previous air raid on Rüsselsheim in World War II. Towards the end of the bombing raid, a German air raid warden, Josef Hartgen, mobilized residents in Rüsselsheim to put out the fires in their homes. Lynching In the morning of August 26, most of the American bomber crewmembers were still proceeding to their original destination. However, the train line was heavily damaged by the Royal Air Force in the previous night so the airmen were taken off the train and forced to walk to Rüsselsheim to catch another train. The prisoners were escorted by two German soldiers. As the Americans marched through Rüsselsheim, the townspeople, assuming the fliers were Canadians who had taken part in the previous night's raid, quickly formed and immediately turned into an uncontrollable angry mob. Two women, Margarete Witzler and Käthe Reinhardt, shouted out, "There are the terror flyers. Tear them to pieces! Beat them to death! They have destroyed our houses!" One of the crew members replied in German, "It wasn't us! We didn't bomb Rüsselsheim!" Nevertheless, one woman threw a brick at the crew and that precipitated a riot during which the townspeople attacked the prisoners with rocks, hammers, sticks and shovels. Three Opel workers arrived with iron bars and started beating the men to death to the cries of the crowd. The mob was joined by air raid warden Josef Hartgen, who was armed with a pistol. The German soldiers who guarded the crew-members made no attempt to prevent the beatings. After the airmen collapsed from the beatings, Hartgen lined them up in the curb and shot six in the head, but ran out of ammunition, leaving two of the airmen, William M. Adams and Sidney E. Brown, alive. The mob then put the airmen on a cart and took them to a cemetery. Those who moaned were further beaten. During the attack, an air raid siren sounded and the mob ran for cover. Adams and Brown managed to crawl from the bloody cart and fled toward the Rhine River, avoiding capture for four days. However, they were discovered by a policeman and taken to their original destination, the camp in Oberursel where they remained until after the war in Europe ended. Trial and execution After the war ended in Europe in May 1945, Rüsselsheim was occupied by the U.S. Army. The killings were reported and the bodies were located on 28 June 1945. Eleven residents of Rüsselsheim, including Josef Hartgen, were arrested and put on trial in the town of Darmstadt in late July 1945. The defense for the townspeople argued that they had been incited to commit the crime by Goebbels' propaganda, that encouraged the German people to take reprisals against downed Allied airmen; and that the defendants were not to bear the guilt for their actions. Lt. Col. Leon Jaworski, who would achieve fame three decades later as the .... Discover the Gregory A Freeman popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Gregory A Freeman books.