Thank you.
I was sent the official U.S. Army Signal Corps history of the battalion. It is so long that I have only read a part of it.
They really were impressive. The first impression I got was just how competent they were. Their officers were clearly real engineers who knew what they were doing.
The other thing was just how fast they worked. Time after time, I would see where one or two companies would be assigned something like building a railroad trestle over some river. Two days later RR trestle completed, then assigned to build a foot bridge six inches below the water and do it at night because they were losing too many men and machines working in the day time.
They had a sergeant shoot down a Focke Wulf 190 which was strafing them, with a BAR. They were attacked by jets who bombed them but all missed. The nearest AA battery tried to get them to certify that they shot down one of the jets. The engineers said they couldn’t as they saw them all fly away.
I just realized how poorly one of the last lines was written.
No the FW-190 was not using a BAR to strafe them. The sergeant used one to shoot down the FW-190.