Wings of liberation

The regional Best museum of ONE BRIDGE TOO FAR:

To their south, units of the 101st sent to take Best the day before, were forced to yield to German counter-attacks during the morning. British tanks arriving during the day helped push back the Germans by late afternoon. Later a small force of Panther tanks arrived at Son and started firing on the Bailey bridge. These too were beaten back by anti-tank guns that had recently landed, and the bridge was secured. On the night of 19/20 September, 78 German bombers took off to attack Eindhoven. The Allies had no antiaircraft guns in the city, allowing the Germans to drop "a clear golden cluster of parachute flares" and bomb Eindhoven without suffering any losses. The city centre was shattered and the water pressure failed; over 200 houses were "gutted" and 9,000 buildings were damaged. The raid inflicted over 1,000 civilian casualties, including 227 dead. An ammunition convoy and trucks carrying gasoline were also hit. General Matthew Ridgway, in Eindhoven during the attack, wrote: "Great fires were burning everywhere, ammo trucks were exploding, gasoline trucks were on fire, and debris from wrecked houses clogged the streets." Elements of the 101st, based in and around the city, witnessed the attack and escaped loss. The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment rushed into the burning city and rescued civilians during the night. According to Rick Atkinson, this was "the only large, long-range air strike by German bombers during the fall of 1944".