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“That’s what I’m told. No trains for the next hour.”

“Then let’s go.”

Bauer and von der Haas grabbed their bags, hustling out of the truck and onto the train tracks of the railway bridge. Bauer picked out two shaped charges of plastic explosives, set them on one of the train tracks eight inches apart, and lit them. They jogged away and waited for the explosion.

It worked. The detonation popped eight inches of rail off the track. “We need sixty inches off one side of the rail, at least thirty off the other side,” said von der Haas. “And they can’t be lined up. They have to be off-center by thirty inches.”

“And we have one hour to do this,” said Bauer. “So let’s hurry.”

They worked on opposite ends, using plastic explosives and blowing off eight-inch pieces of track at a time—eight inches being the maximum amount of track, von der Haas was told, that would separate from the railway ties in an explosion.

“And we’re sure this will work,” said Bauer.

“No, I’m not sure. I was told a train can’t float over a sixty-inch gap. But I’m not sure. Just like I’m not sure that no train will come for the next hour and flatten us like pancakes. Just like I’m not sure it’s a smart idea setting off a series of explosions on a bridge that’s keeping us from plunging fifty feet into an icy river.”

Bauer lit an explosive and jumped away, blowing off another piece of track. “I’m not listening, Erich.”

They used nearly all their sixty minutes. As they completed their work, they heard the thundering approach of the locomotive. They ran off the bridge and jumped back into the truck. Bauer put the vehicle in reverse and backed along the shoreline of the Fulda River. Then they watched and waited. They didn’t even need binoculars. They had front row seats.

The locomotive barreled onto the sixty-meter-long bridge. The front car, followed by fifty flat cars, each holding a massive armored Tiger I tank, sped along the tracks.

The front car bounced on the gaps created by Bauer and von der Haas but didn’t disengage from the track. The first flat car, however, wobbled and bounced to the side, orange sparks spraying everywhere as it detached and tipped over to the right, banging against the bridge railing, which succumbed to the weight of the massive tank sliding into it.

And that was it. The flat car split off entirely from the tracks, plunging through the bridge’s side railing and into the river fifty feet below. What followed was simple physics. Like a beautiful, dysfunctional caterpillar, one flat car after another followed its successor off the tracks and into the Fulda River.

Fifty Tiger I tanks wiped out before reaching the front lines.

Three weeks later, Bauer and von der Haas stood in an elevated clearing in Leipzig, Germany, a hundred yards outside a large factory. In an open-air storage yard, fenced in on all sides to the south of the factory, were forty-seven Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter jets, recently built and ready for transport. The factory operated around the clock in two twelve-hour shifts, in Germany’s rush to replenish its struggling Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force, led by Hermann Göring.

Von der Haas nudged Bauer. “See those large red drums between the planes? Those are full of B4 aviation fuel.”

“Got it.”

“Can you see them okay over the fence?”

“Yeah, I have an angle. I wish I could lie flat, but you can’t have everything.” Bauer looked through the sight of his Kar 98K sniper rifle. “No civilians out there?”

“No,” said von der Haas. “Nobody’s dumb enough to be standing outside in this cold in the middle of the night. Besides us, that is.”

It was, indeed, cold, well below freezing in the dead of night. Bauer aimed his rifle and fired. He hit the first fuel drum near its base, a few inches from the bottom. The barrel didn’t explode as he’d expected. “Those are some seriously reinforced drums,” he said. The good news, however, was the drum started gushing fuel out of the bullet hole.

“Keep doing that,” said von der Haas. “I’ll get the Schiessbecher.”

Bauer shot holes near the bottom of six different fuel drums in different parts of the storage yard. Before long, a pool of aviation fuel covered the pavement.

“Okay, give me Betsy,” said Bauer.

“Betsy? You’ve named your grenade launcher?”

“I’ve grown fond of her.” Bauer clamped the short barrel to the muzzle of the Kar 98K rifle, mounted to the left of the rear sights, and loaded the grenade.

He aimed for the center of the yard, now soaked in spilled aviation fuel. When the grenade landed, the entire field went up in a fiery flash.

“Sorry, General Göring,” said Bauer. “No fighter jets for you tomorrow.”

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December 1944