The glint came first—a single flash of sunlight off aluminum far below, near the surface of the Mediterranean. It was a warm spring afternoon in 1943, and the pilots of the 57th Fighter Group had spent the day on patrol, seeing nothing. Their fuel gauges were near empty, and the mission looked like another dull sweep. Then one of them called out.

Aircraft below. Rubbing their eyes, the pilots could not believe what they saw. Low over the water, just above the waves, flew one of the largest formations of enemy aircraft any of them had ever encountered. The lead Warhawk pushed his plane over without hesitation, and the attack began.

It would come to be known as the Palm Sunday Massacre, one of the greatest aerial slaughters in history, and the event that would end any German hopes for victory in North Africa. By April of 1943, the North African campaign had reached a decisive moment. The Americans had entered the war in full force, and the British had recovered from their earlier setbacks. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Axis forces on the continent were being pushed back into Tunisia, short on fuel and ammunition as supply problems continued to plague the German war machine.

Cut off across the Mediterranean and encircled, their only hope was resupply by air, a task assigned to the transport planes of the Luftwaffe. As Rommel bought time with skirmishes, transport aircraft from German airfields in Sicily stepped up their activity, flying daily and nightly flights to keep the beleaguered Afrika Korps alive. The primary aircraft in this operation was the Junkers Ju52, a tri-motor transport that served the Luftwaffe in many roles. It was reliable and numerous, but undeniably slow and lightly defended, carrying just one or two machine guns to protect itself from aerial attack.

In the early phases of the supply effort, the Luftwaffe’s air transport groups completed a reasonable number of sorties and saw their greatest success at night, operating under the cover of darkness with very few losses. During the day, however, casualties were slowly mounting, mostly from Allied fighter interception. The Allies had a decisive advantage: the Germans were completely unaware that the British were reading all of their communications through the Ultra program. That intelligence worked perfectly with a plan drawn up by the Allies to halt the supply effort entirely.

Operation Flax, authored by Jimmy Doolittle himself, the commander of the Northwest African Strategic Air Force, would see Allied fighter patrols airborne ahead of time and quickly routed to the anticipated locations of supply flights once communications were intercepted. By the start of April, more than 400 transport aircraft were taking part in the German effort, giving Allied fighters plenty of targets. With German losses creeping higher, the Luftwaffe High Command was certain to soon realize the flaw in their strategy and shift to nighttime operations exclusively. The opportunity for a devastating blow was coming, and it would be delivered by one of the least likely units, executing a flawless attack that would bring about their most famous moment.

For the first ten days of April, American P38 units like the 1st Fighter Group ran the show, striking airfields and intercepting transport flights across the Mediterranean with their cannons, elite speed, and range. Despite their efforts, the German flights continued. And around this time, the goal of those flights changed. The Afrika Korps now realized the inevitable outcome of their situation.

They were surrounded, outgunned, and undersupplied. The transport operations that had previously carried supplies into Tunisia now turned into an evacuation effort as well, with more than 200,000 German and Italian soldiers trapped near Tunis. By mid-April, many of the transport flights that were made carried supplies into Tunisia to prolong the last defense. Then they loaded up with as much personnel as could be carried and headed back for Sicily.

One of the largest of these sorties was scheduled for the afternoon of April 18th, 1943. It would involve 65 Junkers Ju52s escorted by roughly 20 German and Italian fighters flying above, including Messerschmitt Bf 109s, Bf 110s, and even a few Italian Macchi C. 202s. Despite multiple sorties sent up in search of German transport flights, no American fighter units had been able to locate anything that day.

The transport crews had learned to fly extremely low to avoid radar detection and make themselves harder to spot. For the first leg of the flight, their plan worked. The transports delivered their supplies, picked up battered troops for evacuation, and took off again for Sicily. On the Allied side of Operation Flax, one of the least involved units up to this point had been the 57th Fighter Group, flying older P40 Warhawks.

Their action had been minimal because the P40 was a slower aircraft with far less range than the P38 flown by most other units in the theater. The Warhawk could fly up to a range of just 700 miles, seriously limiting its capability as a combat interceptor. Nonetheless, it would be these P40s that found the spotlight on April 18th, 1943. After multiple uneventful patrols that day, the 57th took off for one more patrol with 48 fighters assigned to search the areas around Tunis and Cape Bon, with a handful of Royal Air Force Spitfires as top cover, protecting them from German fighters.

Over the Mediterranean, a few miles off the coast, the pilots were close to bingo fuel and about to turn back to base when one of their pilots called out, “Aircraft below. ”

Looking down, catching the glimmer of sunlight off wings, was a massive formation of what appeared to be Junkers Ju52s, the target they had been so desperately looking for. The initial call reported 30 bandits, but the pilots soon realized it was more than 60. The Spitfires flying above relayed that fighter escort was present as well, and that they would take care of it.

After a moment to double check that it wasn’t a trap, the 57th’s leaders, including Captain Roy Whitaker and his P40 named Miss Fury, turned in and dove at the ripe targets. Captain Whitaker later recalled the attack. “I attacked the Ju52s from a stern at high speed and fired at two planes in the leading formation. The bursts were short and the only effect I saw was pieces flying off the cabin of the second ship.

I pulled away and circled to the right and made my second attack. I fired two bursts into two more 52s again in the leading formation. They both burst into flames. The second flew a little distance and then crashed into the water.

I lost sight of the first and didn’t see it hit. I then made a third pass and sent a good burst into the left of the formation at another Junkers. As I pulled away, it crashed into the water. By that time, the 109s were among us.

As I pulled up to the left, I saw a 109 dive through an element of four Warhawks, and I tagged on his underside and gave him a long burst in the belly. He crashed into the sea from 1,000 ft. It was a pilot’s dream. I’d never seen such a complete massacre of the enemy in my life.

I was afraid someone would wake me up. ”

For the 57th Fighter Group, it was a dream. For the Germans aboard the transports, it was a nightmare. According to some American pilots, German infantry on board could be seen firing their machine guns through the windows of the Ju52s, desperately trying to fend off the inevitable attack.

The Warhawks were not to be stopped. The slaughter continued as the P40s came back through the lumbering formations and poured in every round of ammunition they had. Some pilots said parts of aircraft felt like they were falling out of the sky everywhere, and that the biggest challenge was fighting off fellow P40s to get a shot at the next transport. The Ju52s went down one after another, many falling directly into the ocean while others crash-landed on the coast or even purposefully landed their aircraft to avoid being shot down.

Meanwhile, the Spitfires continued to tangle with the fighters, keeping most of them at bay while the P40s dealt the crippling blow to the evacuation flights. In just a few minutes, the Warhawks were out of fuel. What had previously been a massive flight of enemy aircraft had been completely broken up and wiped out. The remaining fighters from both sides turned for home, the Germans licking their wounds, the Americans headed for the biggest celebration of the war.

Upon landing, the tallies were counted, and after bringing them down to a reasonable number, as was typical in such a chaotic air battle, the final tally was 74 total kills, with 51 of them being German transport aircraft. A summary of the victory appeared a few days later in the London edition of the Stars and Stripes newspaper. “US flyers blast Rommel escape planes. Fighters shoot down 51 transport planes bearing Axis troops.

The first indication that the Axis forces might try to escape out of their strong box in the Tunisian tip by air came yesterday with news of a sensational and smashing air victory yesterday by Allied planes. 74 enemy planes, 51 of them transports carrying troops out of Tunisia, were shot down by the famous fighter group of the 9th US Army Air Force. Only nine US planes failed to return. The air battle was a massacre and Axis fighters could do little to prevent it, an official statement said.

Only when their ammunition was exhausted and their fuel low, the Warhawks gave up the chase. RAF records indicate that never before in this war were 74 enemy planes shot down in a single engagement. ”

After the war, German records could be cross-examined, and the claims were fairly close to accurate. According to German sources, Luftwaffe losses were likely 24 transport planes shot down at sea, 35 transports landing on the coast due to damage, nine Bf 109s lost, and one Bf 110.

Two of the stars of the 57th Fighter Group emerged from that mission as the first American Army Air Force aces in a day. Richard Duffy and MacArthur Powers, who both shot down five planes in the slaughter that came to be known as the April 18th Goose Shoot, or to the Germans, the Palm Sunday Massacre. For the Axis evacuation and resupply efforts, this loss was a crippling blow. They would lose more than 20% of their entire North African transport force in a single sortie.

By the time the Luftwaffe air bases had to be evacuated in Tunisia, German ground crew members often opted to climb into fighter fuselages or squeeze into the cockpits with their pilots rather than fly aboard transport aircraft. Never again would transport planes operate in such numbers, especially during the day. Because of Operation Flax, the loss of supply lifelines, and the closure of evacuation routes, the Germans would see more than 200,000 men captured with the fall of Tunisia, just a few weeks after the Palm Sunday Massacre.