A few weeks before Christmas in 1944, ten young men left an American airbase in Italy bound for one of Germany's last remaining oil refineries. They had named their B-24 the Tenmenbak, because they wanted all ten men back after the war.
This flight should have been a cakewalk for the inexperienced crew of the Tenmenbak. It was near the end of the war and Germany's ability to mount an effective air defense was questionable at best. However, in terms of crews and aircraft lost, this mission to Germany was to become one of the most costly in the history of American air warfare. This mission left its mark on the young men of the Tenmenbak in ways they never could have imagined. In 2000, a documentary film producer, Rick Carr, followed the surviving crewmembers to the beautiful countryside of Slovakia, where they discovered the remains of their B-24 bomber and a touching memorial for a comrade who never made it home.
This flight should have been a cakewalk for the inexperienced crew of the Tenmenbak. It was near the end of the war and Germany's ability to mount an effective air defense was questionable at best. However, in terms of crews and aircraft lost, this mission to Germany was to become one of the most costly in the history of American air warfare. This mission left its mark on the young men of the Tenmenbak in ways they never could have imagined. In 2000, a documentary film producer, Rick Carr, followed the surviving crewmembers to the beautiful countryside of Slovakia, where they discovered the remains of their B-24 bomber and a touching memorial for a comrade who never made it home.