LUFTWAFFE FIGHTER PILOT: Defending the Reich Against the RAF and USAAF

243 Pages·2010·3.8 MB·English

by  Wolfgang Fischer

Published by
Grub Street
4 Rainham Close
London
SW11 6SS
Copyright © Grub Street 2010
Copyright text © Wolfgang Fischer and John Weal 2010
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fischer, Wolfgang.
Luftwaffe fighter pilot: defending the Reich against the RAF and USAAF.
1. Fischer, Wolfgang. 2. Germany. Luftwaffe--History.
3. World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, German.
4. World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, German.
5. Fighter pilots--Germany--Biography.
I. Title
940.5'44943'092-dc22
ISBN-13: 9781906502836
eISBN-13: 978-1-908117-98-4
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retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the copyright owner.
Cover design and typesetting by Sarah Driver Edited by Sophie Campbell
Printed and bound by MPG Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Grub Street Publishing only
uses FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) paper for its books.
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1: A Carefree Childhood
Chapter 2: Growing up in the ‘New Age’
Chapter 3: War is Declared
Chapter 4: The Start of my Flying Career
Chapter 5: Training to be a Fighter Pilot
Chapter 6: Posted to the Front
Chapter 7: The Normandy Invasion
Chapter 8: Captivity
Chapter 9: The War is Over
Appendices
Aircraft Types Flown by the Author
Units in which the Author Served
Unit Notes and Histories
PREFACE
‘Yellow 1’ lurched violently as the flak shell burst close alongside. Pieces of
shrapnel tore into the fuselage and engine cowling. I knew instinctively that this
was it, and half expected to see my past life flash before my eyes. But training
took over. Hauling the stick back into my stomach, I pointed the nose of the
Focke-Wulf skywards. I desperately needed to gain altitude, not only to escape
the tracer being hosed up at me from the armada of ships beneath my wings, but
also to give myself sufficient height to bale out.
As I climbed, still under fire, I unbuckled my seat harness and disconnected the
radio leads. Judging the time to be right, and before the labouring engine gave up
the ghost altogether, I jettisoned the canopy and kicked the stick forwards. The
machine bucked and I was catapulted clean out of the cockpit. Buffeted by the
slipstream, I was thrown against the tailplane, but scarcely noticed what I took to
be a glancing blow on my left shoulder.
We had flown a wide arc out to sea before mounting our attack and now,
fortunately, a stiff offshore breeze was carrying me towards the coastline. But I
still couldn’t be sure whether I was going to come down in the shallows or make
it to dry land. As I drifted closer, and despite the light flak that continued to flick
past dangerously close to my parachute, I found myself reflecting on the twenty-
three-year journey–the last five of those years in Luftwaffe uniform–that had
brought me to my present predicament descending helplessly towards the
Normandy invasion beaches…

Chapter 1
A CAREFREE CHILDHOOD
Fate, in the guise of my father’s career, decreed that I should be born in
Waldthurn, a tiny community in the heart of the Upper Palatinate Forest some
seventy-five kilometres north of Regensburg. The date was 30 October 1921.
Less than three years had passed since the end of the Great War, and the
aftermath of that conflict had brought sweeping changes to this sleepy backwater
region of northeastern Bavaria. Its near neighbours, citizens of the collapsed
Austro-Hungarian Empire, spoke the same language; even the same local dialect.
For centuries the two sides, Bavarian and Bohemian, had co-existed as part of
the Holy Roman Empire. Now Bohemia found itself incorporated into the newly
established state of Czechoslovakia–brought into being by the post-war treaties
of Versailles, St. Germain and Trianon–and enclosed behind a rigidly enforced
frontier. It was my father’s duties as a customs official on the Czech border that
had brought the family to Waldthurn.
But Bavaria had undergone changes too. Following the Great War it lost its
status as an independent kingdom. As part of the new German republic it had to
forfeit a number of sovereign rights, including control of its own borders, the
responsibility for which now passed into the hands of central government.
Although a patriotic German, father allowed his Bavarian heart to rule his head
and declined the offer to remain in the service of the state. Our brief sojourn in
Waldthurn thus came to an abrupt end. Apparently father received an indemnity
which, although not exactly generous, enabled him to brave the very bleak
economic situation prevailing in Germany at this time and take the plunge into
the commercial world. Having studied political economy and business
administration in the course of his civil service career, he landed a job as
manager of a sawmill in Miesbach, a small town to the southeast of Munich.
Not yet three years old, I have no recollection at all of the family’s move in
1924. But not long afterwards–I must by then have been in my second year at the
local primary school–I got my first childish insight into the political turbulence
that was already beginning to jeopardize Germany’s fragile young democracy. It
transpired that one of father’s colleagues at the sawmill, the man in charge of the
company’s books, was apparently siphoning off some of the profits for himself.
As soon as father got wind of this he fired the man on the spot. The miscreant
turned up at our house the following day accompanied by his brother and, after
some heated words had been exchanged, declared himself a communist.
Accusing father of being a ‘capitalist lackey’, he demanded his job back,
claiming he had the full support of the KPD, or German Communist Party.
This didn’t go down at all well with my father and the proceedings quickly
developed into a free-for-all. Unfortunately for the avowed communist, his
brother was rather small and slight of stature and this lent something of a comic
air to the ensuing brawl. With his left hand father grabbed the weedy sibling by
the back of his braces and lifted him clear off his feet. Held face down just above
the floor, arms and legs flailing, he could do little more than squeal loudly while
father brought matters to a swift conclusion by delivering a series of well-aimed
right-handers to his remaining opponent.
Nor should mother’s part in this fracas go unrecorded. Becoming aware of the
increasing commotion, and fearing no good would come of it, she had rushed
into the bedroom to get the Browning pistol that father had ‘liberated’ from a
Tommy officer on the western front. Reappearing moments later, she planted
herself heroically behind the struggling trio and began fumbling with the
unfamiliar ‘indoors cannon’. By then, thank God, father had the situation well in
hand and she was not called upon to use it. Had she done so, she would very
likely have drilled holes through all three of them. Having witnessed the entire
episode, I later asked father what a communist was. He told me that they were
‘enemies of the state’. Since then I have always had something against
communists.
It was not until our next move, which took us to Thansau on the east bank of the
River Inn some ten kilometres south of Rosenheim, that the world began to open
up for me. The year was 1928, I was nearing the end of my time in primary
school, and it was the dawn of what people were optimistically calling the ‘New
Age’. But I was not yet old enough to have any idea of what this new age held in
store for us. I spent my childhood in what can only be described as one large
playground.
Some of my happiest memories revolve around the Inn itself. In those days the
river had not yet been harnessed by the series of weirs that have since been
constructed to the south of Rosenheim–right by Thansau, in fact. In my time it
tumbled freely down from the narrow valleys of the Alps, flowing through