On the morning of 6 September 1943, 388 B-17 Flying Fortresses gathered over southern England and the English Channel, bound for Stuttgart to destroy its industrial sector, where American intelligence in 1943 estimated 90% of Germany's magnetos and fuel injection nozzles were being produced. A fifth of this flotilla aborted because of the weather or mechanical failure, leaving the remainder of the formation to carry on into France, where it began splitting into different diversionary flights to draw away the "staffeln" from Jagdgeschwader 2. This was the first daylight attack on Stuttgart, the United States Army Air Force's first attack on Stuttgart, and the eleventh raid on the city. Of the 262 B-17s that made it to Stuttgart, 45 were lost. Two airmen were killed on the operation while a further 333 went missing in action.