Yeager: We Obeyed the Order to Kill German Civilians

American World War II aviator Chuck Yeager stated in his 1986 autobiography that his squadron had received orders to shoot at anything that moved because “Germany was not so easily divided into civilians and military personnel. After all, the farmer in his potato patch nourished German troops.”

“Our seventy-five Mustangs were assigned an area of fifty miles by fifty miles inside Germany and ordered to strafe anything that moved.”

“We were ordered to commit an atrocity pure and simple.”

“I’m certainly not proud of that strafing mission against civilians. But it is there, on the record and in my memory.”