Luftwaffe Viermot Aces 1942–45

100 Pages·2011·20.88 MB·English

by  Robert Forsyth

Luftwaffe Viermot toes
1942-45
Robert Forsyth
ROBERT FORSYTH has
studied the history and
operations of the Luftwaffe
for many years. He has written
four books for Osprey -
Aviation Elite Units 27:
Jagdverband 44 - Squadron
of Experten and Aviation Elite
Units 29: Jagdgeschwader 7
‘Nowotny’, Duel 24: Fw 190 vs
B-17 and Aircraft of the Aces
99: Legion Condor Aces. He is
also the author of JV 44 - The
Galland Circus (1996), Battle
over Bavaria: The B-26 versus
the German Jets (1998),
Mistel: German Composite
Aircraft and Operations
1942-1945 (2001) and
Messerschmitt Me 264
Amerikabomber (2006 - with
Eddie J Creek). He is presently
working on a volume on
Me 262 bomber and
reconnaissance units for
publication in the Osprey
Combat Aircraft series.
Profile artist JIM LAURIER is
a native of New Hampshire.
He graduated with honours
from the Paiers School of Art,
Connecticut, in 1978 and has
worked as a freelance
illustrator ever since,
completing assignments in
a wide variety of fields. Jim
has a keen interest in military
subjects, both aviation and
armour, and is a Fellow
member of the American
Society of Aviation Artists,
the New York Society of
Illustrators and the American
Fighter Aces Association. He
has been a key contributor to
the Osprey Aviation list since
2000, and in that time he has
produced some of the finest
artwork seen in these
volumes.
OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES • 101
Luftwaffe Viermot
Aces 1942-45

SERIES EDITOR: TONY HOLMES
OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES * 101
tjft Luftwaffe Viermot
Aces 1942-45
Robert Forsyth
Front Cover First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Osprey Publishing
On 1 August 1943, a combined force Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford, 0X2 OPH
of B-24 Liberators drawn from five
44-02 23rd Street, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY, 11101, USA
groups of the US Eighth and Ninth
Air Forces launched a major strike
on the Ploesti oilfields and refinery E-mail; [email protected]
complex north of Bucharest, in
Rumania, which produced some
Osprey Publishing is part of the Osprey Group
ten million tons of oil per year, with
the aim of depriving the Third Reich
of a valued source of fuel. Flying © 2011 Osprey Publishing Limited
from bases near Benghazi, in Libya,
the 178 B-24s constituting Operation
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,
Tidal Wave followed a 2000-mile
course across the Mediterranean, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Design and
passing over the island of Corfu, Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
before turning at the Albanian coast
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
and heading inland over Yugoslavia
electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
and Bulgaria towards the target.
The bombers, flying at low level, without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be
were harried by flak and fighters. addressed to the Publisher.
Mark Postlethwaite's dramatic,
cover art depicts the moment that
Feldwebel Albert Palm of 3./JG 4 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
manoeuvred his Bf 109G-2 'Yellow 6'
to attack a B-24 of the 44th BG - the ISBN: 978 1 84908 438 3
'Flying Eightballs' - by diving from
e-book ISBN: 978 1 84908 439 0
astern as the low-flying bombers
emerged from the drifting clouds of
black smoke spiralling up from the Edited by Tony Holmes
burning refineries. Page design by Tony Truscott
3./JG 4, under the command of Cover Artwork by Mark Postlethwaite
the combat-seasoned Hauptmann
Aircraft Profiles by Jim Laurier
Manfred Spenner (formerly of JG 52)
Index by Michael Forder
and based at Mizil, northeast of
Ploesti, had been formed in Originated by United Graphic Pte Ltd
Rumania in early January 1943 and Printed and bound in China through Bookbuilders
built up with Rumanian personnel
under a Luftwaffe officer cadre. The
Staffel's prime duty at this time was 11 12 13 14 15 109 876 5432 1
the air defence of the oilfields and
refineries, although the following www. ospreypublishing. com
year it relocated with the rest of
I./JG 4 to western Germany to
engage in the defence of the Reich. Acknowledgements
During the bitter action over I would like to thank Erik Mombeek and Eddie J Creek for their kind and
Ploesti, Alfred Palm would account essential support to this project. I would also like to acknowledge the kind
for the destruction of a B-24. He had assistance of J Richard Smith, Martin Pegg, Nick Beale and Donald Nijboer.
flown previously with 8./JG 77, and
Many years ago I interviewed and corresponded with a number of former
at the time of leaving that Staffel to
German fighter pilots who experienced at first-hand what it was like to engage
join 3./JG 4 he had 28 victories to
his credit. In March 1944 Palm formations of heavy bombers, including Adolf Galland, Oskar Bosch, Fritz
suffered severe injuries to his right Buchholz, Richard Franz, Klaus Neumann, Willi Reschke, Gustav Rodel, Franz
foot and ankle when he was forced Steiner, Franz Stigler and Willi Unger. The information that I was able to glean
to bail out over Italy after his Bf 109
from those exchanges is as important today as it was back in the late 1980s and
was attacked by Kittyhawks. Once
early 1990s when I obtained it. I thank them for their patience and cooperation
he had recovered, Palm served as an
instructor, before returning to JG 4 during my research of some 20 years ago.
towards the end of the war. This book is dedicated to David Wadman, whose cheerfulness and fortitude
Thirty-three B-24s were lost to is an example to all. Looking back, I realise that the book has its origins in a
flak during the Ploesti raid and ten
discussion I had with Dave late one night 21 years ago in a bar in Mesa, Arizona
to fighters. Another 56 Liberators
were damaged — after one beer too many. I knew that was a mistake.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
HEAD-ON 6
CHAPTER TWO
CORNERED WOLF 20
CHAPTER THREE
'BIG WEEK' AND BERLIN 34
CHAPTER FOUR
BLOODY APRIL 45
CHAPTER FIVE
'STOVEPIPES' AND DESTROYERS 62
CHAPTER SIX
ALL-OUT DEFENCE 70
CHAPTER SEVEN
STORMBIRDS 84
APPENDICES 90
COLOUR PLATES COMMENTARY 92
INDEX 96
HEAD-ON
E
N
O
R
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T
P
A
H
C At the beginning of August 1942 the Luftwaffe fighter force
was committed predominantly to two major theatres of war.
To the east, Gruppen drawn from six Jagdgeschwader, fielding
around 500 single-engined fighters, were operating in the USSR,
deployed on a 2000-kilometre front engaging an enemy that, in terms of
size, matched them. By this stage of the war the Soviet air force had
recovered from setbacks it had suffered during the previous winter
and spring and was enjoying a period of qualitative and organisational
improvement. For the time being, as the long drive towards Stalingrad
loomed, more intuitive German commanders realised that an early
victory in Russia was a dim prospect.
In North Africa, a smaller force comprising six Jagdgruppen from two
Geschwader provided support to the Afrika Korps as it struggled to break the
line which the British held between El Alamein and the Qattara depression.
Thousands of kilometres away from these distant battlefronts, most of
the German population in its homes and factories, in its offices and
shops, its schools and hospitals, although placed on a war-footing, In a scene typical of its time, pilots
continued to function, in daylight hours at least, without much direct of 2./JG 2, clad in life jackets and
flare bandoliers, gather around
disruption from the enemy. For two years, RAF Bomber Command had
one of the unit's Fw 190A-4s at
mounted a determined campaign of night raids using light and medium
their airfield in France to be briefed
bombers to strike at shipping, the transport infrastructure and industry by their Staffelkapitan in early 1943.
in several major cities, including Berlin. In this, the British had been From the summer of 1942 to
mid-1943, this Staffel, along with
relatively successful. Equally, however, the Luftwaffe had built up an
the others of JG 2 and JG 26, formed
effective and technologically sophisticated nightfighter and flak
the Luftwaffe's first line of defence
organisation that inflicted an increasing toll on the night bombers. against the Allied bomber offensive
6
Most of Western Europe was firmly under German occupation.
In one form or another, Hitler’s ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ spread
from Norway to the French Riviera, from the Channel Coast to
Czechoslovakia. Although America had joined the European war,
and its first P-38 Lightning fighters and B-17 Flying Fortress heavy
bombers were arriving in England, so secure did the Germans consider
their hold on Europe to be that responsiblity for guarding the skies over
the western ‘gateway’ to the occupied territories in the hours of daylight
was assigned, in the main, to just two Jagdgeschwader (JG 2 and JG 26),
based in France and Belgium.
Fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with this state of affairs. Since
early 1941, the RAF had concerned itself with a ‘lean towards France’,
mounting a campaign of offensive fighter sweeps aimed - nominally — at
needling and testing the German air defences by strafing ground
installations, troop concentrations, railways and airfields, although as one
British historian has commented, ‘the Germans appeared to be largely
unimpressed’. During the Channel campaign of 1941-42, fighter pilots on
both sides had learned, developed and refined fighter-versus-fighter tactics.
Pitted against the RAF’s Spitfires, Hurricanes and Whirlwinds were
the trusty, but regularly re-engineered, Messerschmitt Bf 109Fs and,
following its introduction to the Channel Front in mid-1941, the much
vaunted radial-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 190A.
Flying these two fighter types, the France and Belgium-based German
jagdflieger demonstrated impressive levels of combat dexterity, with a
number of pilots from both Geschwader notching up high personal scores,
and in doing so, becoming the darlings of the propaganda reporters and
film cameras for the benefit of German newsreels ‘back home’.
In Holland, another unit, JG 1, had been assigned the defence of the
northwestern approaches to Germany. As with its sister units to the
south, most of JG l’s activity to mid-1942 had centred upon intercepting
Spitfires and probing formations of British twin-engined Bleinheims,
Whitleys, Hampdens, Hudsons, Beauforts and Wellingtons (known by
the Germans as ‘Zweimots’- ‘two-engines’). The latter attacked shipping
and coastal targets and the German ports, as well as some targets further
inland, during the hours of daylight. These raids, frequently mounted
without fighter escort or with an escort that was large but poorly
organised (known as ‘Circuses’), suffered casualties at the hands of a
German defence, which was wrongly assumed to have been significantly
weakened by a mass relocation to the USSR.
Between 11 November 1941 and 22 February 1942, the RAF had
mounted daylight bombing operations on 20 days (543 sorties), from
which 40 aircraft were lost (7.4 per cent), although the precise respective
figures attributable to flak and fighters are not known.
The RAF usually despatched formations of between 10-30 bombers
at a height of a little over 20,000 ft. If escorted, the fighters were ordered
to remain with the bombers, much as Luftwaffe fighter pilots had been
instructed to do over Britain in the summer of 1940. Initially, the
Germans, under orders to attack only the bombers, and to ignore the
escort, dealt with these formations by manoeuvring their fighters
above and behind the bombers before diving through any escort, opening
fire randomly at hastily selected targets and then diving away.
In November 1941, the Kommodore of JG 26, Oberst Adolf Galland, Guarding the airspace over Holland
was appointed the General der Jagdflieger following the untimely and and the northern approaches to the
Reich against Allied bombers in
unwelcome death of the previous incumbent, the revered Werner
1942-43 was JG 1. Here, Fw 190A-3
Molders. Galland successfully pushed for a revision of the prevailing
'White V of the Staffelkapitan of
bomber interception tactics and gained more freedom for his pilots to 10. Staffel, Oberleutnant Friedrich
take on the Spitfires that would pursue the Bf 109s as they broke away Eberle, is rolled back towards it
dispersal by groundcrew at
from their pass over the bombers.
Bergen-op-Zoom, in Holland,
Galland recalled the weight of fire from a Spitfire at this time as being in May 1942. Note the 12 victory
Very effective’. While with JG 26, his pilots had devised special tactics markings on the fighter's rudder
that saw them exploiting cloud cover to move slowly and carefully
towards the British escort without being noticed, before quickly assessing
a vulnerable or ‘covenient’ part of the formation to attack. The German
pilots would then climb slightly and dive quickly before the escort had a
chance to react. Galland also experimented with the method of deploying
a number of his fighters to the rear of and above an enemy formation,
thus diverting the attention of the escort while, alone, he would climb
slowly and gradually out of the clouds below the formation. Hopefully
remaining unseen, he would close in on one of the lower elements, select
a target, shoot it down and then quickly dive into the clouds to get away.
Such tactics occasionally brought success, but they could also result in
losses, such as on 13 October when, having attacked a formation of
Blenheims from below and shot one down in flames, Galland veered
away unscathed. His inexperienced wingman, however, was not so
fortunate, drawing fire from the turret gunner of the Blenheim he was
targeting. Leutnant Peter Goring, a nephew of Hermann Goring, crashed
to his death. Also, these methods depended to a great extent on weather
and an ineffective or slow-to-react escort.
Somewhat more ominous had been the appearance, in July 1941,
of a new British y*w-engined bomber — a ‘Viermot* (a contraction of
‘four-engines’) — the Short Stirling, which carried a crew of six protected
by no fewer than eight 0.303-in Browning machine guns housed in nose,
dorsal and tail turrets.