Luftwaffe Bomber Aces/Men, Machines, Methods

235 Pages·2001·8.36 MB·English

by  Mike Spick

LUFTWAFFE
BOMBER ACES
Men, Machines, Methods
MIKE SPICK
GREENHILL BOOKS, LONDON
STACKPOLE BOOKS, PENNSYLVANIA
Luftwaffe Bomber Aces
First published 2001 by Greenhill Books
Lionel Leventhal Limited, Park House, 1 Russell Gardens,
London NW119NN
and
Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg,
PA 17055, USA
© Mike Spick, 2001
The author's rights have been asserted
At! rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the written
permission of the Publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Spick, Mike
Luftwaffe bomber aces : men, machines, methods
1. Germany. Luftwaffe 2. Bomber pilots - Germany
3. World War, 1939-1945 - Aerial operations, German
I. Title
940.5'44943
ISBN 1-85367-444-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Edited, designed and typeset by Roger Chesneau
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Creative Print and Design (Wales), Ebbw Vale
CONTENTS
List of illustrations and tables 7
Prologue 11
1 The Storm Clouds Gather 15
The Planes in Spain . . .—Equipment and Organisation—Crises—
Level Bombers—Level Bombers/Dive Bombers—Dive Bombers—
Organisation—Nomenklatur
2 Blitzkrieg 32
Low-Level Attacks—Assault on Poland
3 Anti-Shipping Operations, 1939-40 42
German Carrier Aviation—Küstenflieger—Trial and Error—Operation
'Weserübung'
4 Victory in the West 55
The Burning of Rotterdam—France—Breakthrough at Sedan—The
Race for the Sea—Assault on the Ports—Two Miracles—The
Capitulation of France
5 Assault on England, July 1940-May 1941 70
The Channel Battles—Adlerangriff—Bombs on London—The Night
Blitz—German Blind Bombing Systems—The Firelighters—Tactics
Against the Night Fighters
6 Campaigns in the South 118
Assault in the Balkans—Crete—Malta—North Africa
7 War in the East 132
Leningrad, 1941—The March to the East—The Road to Stalingrad—
The Tide Turns—The Long Road Back
LUFTWAFFE BOMBER ACES
8 The Strategic War at Sea 149
The Battle of the Atlantic—Over the Atlantic—Desert Diversion—
Fliegerführer Atlantik—Arctic Operations—Guided Missiles
9 Western Front, July 1941-May 1944 173
Stratospheric Strikers—The Baedeker Raids—Angriffsführer England
—Operation 'Steinbock'
10 Last Stand in the West 186
Mistel—Doodlebugs—Fighter-Bombers—The German Jets
11 The Bomber Aces 199
12 Stuka and Schlacht Aces 212
Appendix: Main Luftwaffe Bomber and Attack Aircraft 227
Bibliography 235
Index 237
ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES
Plates (pages 97-112)
1 Ugly and angular—the Ju 87 dive bomber
2 The He 111, the backbone of the Kampfflieger in the early years
3 A shot-down He 111H-5 of Stab III/KG 26
4 The Henschel Hs 123B, which gave sterling service over Poland
5 The Heinkel He 115, mainly used for minelaying early in the war
6 A German SC 500 bomb which landed at Mosta, Malta
7 The Dornier Do 217E, which entered service in 1941 with II/KG 40
8 A Do 217M damaged by a 'Z' rocket battery over Ealing
9 The Focke-Wulf FW 200C, which caused damage to Allied shipping
10 The Junkers Ju 188A—a very much improved Ju 88
11 The Heinkel He 177A, which was endlessly delayed by engine fires
12 The Henschel Hs 129B—first of the 'big gun' anti-tank aircraft
13 The Junkers Ju 87G tank-buster, lethal in the hands of an expert
14 The Focke-Wulf FW 190, which started to replace the Ju 87 in 1943
15 The 1,800kg Satan—one of the largest bombs used by the Luftwaffe
16 The Messerschmitt Me 410, a replacement for the elderly Bf 110
17 The He 111H as a carrier for the Fi 103 'Doodlebug'
18 The Arado Ar 234—the world's first operational jet bomber
19 The final variant of the Ar 234, with a conventional undercarriage
20 The Messerschmitt Me 262A, which was adapted as a fighter-bomber
21 Hans-Georg Batcher celebrates his 500th sortie
22 Werner Baumbach, who had a full and varied career
23 Walter Bradel, who was killed when his Do 217 crashed at Amsterdam
24 Hans-Joachim Herrmann with Reichsmarschall Herman Goering
25 Full military honours for Walter Bradel and his crew
7
LUFTWAFFE BOMBER ACES
26 Martin Harlinghausen after his grand tour of the Suez Canal
27 Karl-Heinrich Hofer as Kommandeur II/KG 55
28 Bernhard Jope, one of the most distinguished Condor pilots with KG 40
29 Ritterkreuz holder Robert Kowaleski
30 Ritterkreuz holder Viktor von Lossberg
31 Dieter Lukesch, awarded the Eichenlaub to the Ritterkreuz
32 Helmut Mahlke, awarded the Ritterkreuz after 145 sorties
33 Volprecht Riedesel Freiherr zu Eisenbach
34 Horst Rudat, awarded the Ritterkreuz on 24 March 1943
35 Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the most decorated soldier of the Third Reich
Diagrams (drawn by John Richards)
1 The Staffelwinkel 22
2 The Staffelkolonne 23
3 The Stqffelkeil 26
4 The Gruppenkolonne aus Staffelwinkeln 28
5 The Gruppenkolonne aus geschlossenen Staffelkeilen 30
6 Typical dive bombing attack by a Junkers Ju 88 46
7 Effectiveness of slatted air brakes as fitted to the Junkers Ju 87 64
8 The Lorenz beam 90
9 The Knickebein bombing system 91
10 The X-Gerät bombing system 93
11 The Y-Gerät bombing system 94
12 Fighter evasion with a Junkers Ju 88 114
13 Hajo Herrmann's flight, 6/7 April 1941 123
14 The Eastern Front: front lines 138
15 The Battle of the Atlantic 151
16 Single-aircraft attacks on shipping 152
17 The 'Swedish Turnip' attack 156
18 Torpedo attack (1) 162
19 Torpedo attack (2) 163
20 The 'Golden Comb' 164
21 The fate of convoy PQ.17 166
8
Typical attack using a Fritz X guided bomb 169
22
Typical attack with an Hs 293 glider bomb 171
23
Method of operation of the Egon blind bombing system 182
24
The attack on London, 24 February 1944 184
25
26 The Mistel attack 190
Tables
1 Luftwaffe Strike Units in the West, 10 May 1940 56
2 German Bomber Order of Battle in the West, 13 August 1940 75
3 Bomber Units, Operation 'Marita', 5 April 1941 122
4 Bomber Units, Operation 'Mercury', 20 May 1941 124
5 Bomber and Stuka Order of Battle, Eastern Front, 24 June 1941 134
6 Kursk: Luftwaffe Bomber and Attack Order of Battle 144
7 Luftwaffe Order of Battle, Operation 'Steinbock', 20 January 1944 180
9
PROLOGUE
There were hundreds of guns firing at us, as if they'd been brought here from the entire
Empire to guard the artery of world power. Flashes appeared from all over the island. It
was a veritable wasp's nest. Through the glass of the cockpit I could see the airfield at
Luqa steep below me. We were not going to make it! Then Helbig's aircraft tilted down,
and the entire Staff Flight went with him. The light blue underbellies of all the aircraft
showed simultaneously. No waverers! A second later I lowered my dive brakes, put the
nose down, and throttled right back. Out of the corner of my eye I watched my wing men.
I looked ahead. I was right behind Helbig in the vic of the Staff Flight. The Staff Flight
aircraft were racing down ahead of me but seemed to be poised, motionless, over the
target area, their wings like narrow lines, as if on an aerial photograph. Press on! . ..
At last! Ahead and below me there was movement in the formation. Almost as if they
were rocket-propelled, the staff aircraft, pulling out of their dive, swept out from the
target, so that in a flash I could see the imperial crosses on the upper surfaces of their
wings. Our turn now! I held my aim down to the smallest ring of light in my sight. The
alarm klaxon blared out: that meant that I was 800 metres above the ground. I could see
my target clearly ... I pressed the bomb release.
This was the first sortie by Hans-Joachim (Hajo) Herrmann against Malta in
February 1941. A Junkers Ju 8 8 pilot, he had flown the He 111 against Poland
and Norway with KG 4, then the Ju 88 against France and England. A holder
of the Ritterkreuz, he was now Kommandeur III/KG 30, and was destined to
go on to still greater things. Malta was at this time defended by anti-aircraft
guns and a handful of RAF Hurricanes, and was not yet the hornet's nest it
later became. Leading the raid was Joachim Helbig, at this time Kommandeur
1/LG 1 (Ju 88), who already held the Ritterkreuz with Eichenlaub, and who, a
little more than one month earlier, had led attacks on the British aircraft car
rier HMS Illustrious in the Mediterranean which had all but sunk her, putting
her out of the war for eighteen months.
Malta was just beginning to win her reputation as 'the unsinkable aircraft
carrier'—a reputation which would be justified by future events. The raid
11
LUFTWAFFE BOMBER ACES
described was recorded as having destroyed eight Wellington bombers and
severely damaged another seven, thus helping to secure the supply lines to
North Africa, where the Deutsches Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel, com
bined with the Italian Army, battled with the British Empire for control of
Egypt and the Suez Canal. Had Rommel been successful in this undertaking,
the Wehrmacht would have been free to advance to the oilfields of the Middle
East. The loss of oil—the life blood of war—would have been critical to the
Empire. Nor would German difficulties have been extreme: Iraq, in particular,
was to a degree anti-British.
The primary air weapon was the bomb. When one considers it, this was an
extremely primitive weapon. If released in straight and level flight, it acceler
ates downwards at the rate of 32ft/sec2 while retaining to a degree the forward
speed of the releasing aircraft. Given that it is correctly sighted, and in still air
conditions, a lapse of one-tenth of a second from an altitude which gives a
falling time of 30 seconds and a forward speed of 180mph (290kph) will give
an error of 792ft (241 m). Given a crosswind of 30mph (48kph), the bomb will
drift a considerable distance to the downwind side of the target. The counter
to this is to establish the wind direction on the ground, then to bomb directly
into it, or directly against it. This should in theory counterbalance crosswind
error. It does not always do so because wind direction tends to vary at differ
ent altitudes. But even if the wind direction does not vary, and the attack is
made directly into, or with, the prevailing wind, its strength is still an un
known quantity. Assuming a wind strength of 30mph (48kph) in either direc
tion, even with precise aiming a significant longitudinal error is incurred. Level
bombing was therefore an inexact science. It must also be appreciated that
what could be achieved on the range from a moderate altitude bore little rela
tionship to actual combat conditions. When the bomb aimer was being shot at,
and in imminent danger of extinction, the margin of level bombing error in
creased by a factor of three.
In the Second World War there was just one possible alternative. Dive bomb
ing radically decreased the relative speed over the ground; in fact, if a 90-
degree dive angle could be achieved, it became zero. At the same time, the
release height of the bomb was greatly reduced and, with it, the time of flight.
This made for tremendously increased accuracy, allowing pinpoint attacks.
12
PROLOGUE
Ironically, the Luftwaffe adopted this—ironically for two reasons. First, while
it paid lip service to the idea of a strategic bomber force, dive bombers could
be little other than tactical aircraft supporting the surface forces, whether army
or navy. Secondly, stressing aircraft for dive attacks involved weight increases,
which significantly reduced payload/range capacity. The Luftwaffe never suc
ceeded in producing a true strategic bomber in the entire war—an omission
that it came to regret.
The fact is that the dive bomber was extremely vulnerable to anti-aircraft
fire. Tipping over into a dive against a defended target made it a fairly easy,
slow, no-deflection shot for ground fire. The supreme irony of this was that
Germany led the field in Flakartillerie. Had Poland, France or Britain had the
numerical and technical equivalent of the '88, the dive bomber would have
been shown for what it was—a slow and unhandy non-starter. But they did
not! And so, in the early days of the Second World War, the Ju 87 Stuka and
the Ju 88 built a legendary reputation, which was to a large degree founded on
the weakness of their opponents.
On the Russian Front, matters were even worse. Many German Ju 87 pilots
notched up more than 1,000 sorties. The historical record shows that they
could not have done this in the West.
13