The new Storm Groups delivered—and took—frightful casualties. In just two days, September 11 and 12, they lost thirty-eight pilots. Barely reinforced, Vorberg’s unit flew on September 27 against over 300 Liberators of the 2nd Bomb Division. The combatants—an air force that had never been turned back and one sworn to protect its home soil—collided in the skies over central Germany. For Jimmy Stewart’s old Liberator group, the 445th at Tibenham, it was the blackest day of the war. It suffered more losses than any single combat unit sustained in the history of American aerial warfare.
