Luftwaffe fighter aces : the Jagdflieger and their combat tactics and techniques

240 Pages·2011·5.35 MB·English

by  Spick

LUFTWAFFE
FIGHTER ACES
LUFTWAFFE
FIGHTER ACES
The Jagdflieger and their Combat
Tactics and Techniques

MIKE SPICK

FRONTLINE
BOOKS
A Greenhill Book
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited
www.greenhillbooks.com
Reprinted in this format in 2011 by
Frontline Books
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S702AS
© Mike Spick, 1996
ISBN 978 1 84832 627 9
The right of Mike Spick to be identified as
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Prologue
The Fighter Ace—The Luftwaffe—Basic Fighter Manoeuvres—The Legion Kondor
1 The Lightning Victories
The Invasion of Poland—The Campaign in the West—Blitzkrieg—Dunkirk—The Experten
2 The Battle of Britain
Fighters of the Battle of Britain—Destroyer—Battle Overview—Phase 1: Early July to 10 August
—Phase 2: August to 6 September—Phase 3:7 to 30 September—Phase 4:1 October to 31 December
—The Experten
3 Barbarossa to Zitadelle
First Strike—Advance to Moscow—There and Back Again—Fighters of the Early Eastern Front—The
Experten
4 Western Front, 1941–43
Focke-Wulf FW 190A—The British Response—The Campaign—The Experten
5 North Africa
Malta—Desert Song—‘Torch’—The Experten
6 The Night Air War, 1940–42
Intruders—The Defence of the Reich—The Aircraft—The Experten
7 The Yank He Cometh, 1943–45
The Defence of the Reich—Gefechtsverband—The Fighters—The Experten
8 Red Sky at Night
Window on Hamburg—Silk Purses from Sows’ Ears—New Threats—Schräge Musik—Nuremberg
—The Beginning of the End—The Aircraft—The Experten
9 Overlord to Götterdämmerung
The Fighters—The Experten
10 Retreat in the East
The Fighters—Flying the Bf 109G—The Experten
11 The Jet Aces
The Jets and their Opponents—Schwalbe in Action—Me 262 in Service—The Experten
Epilogue
Overclaiming—Relative Scores—Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…
Appendices
1. Luftwaffe Fighter Unit Organisation—2. Day Fighter Experten—3. Night Fighter Experten—4.
Strike Rates
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plates (between pages 96 and 121)
1 Werner Mölders emerges from the cockpit of his Bf 109.
2 Mölders boards his Bf 109E in France in 1940.
3 Wilhelm Balthasar, in the closing stages of the Battle of Britain.
4 Helmut Wick, Kommodore of JG 2.
5 Gerd Schöpfet, scorer of 40 victories.
6 Gerd Barkhorn, Kommandeur of II/G 52.
7 Hermann Graf, one of the fastest scorers on the Russian Front.
8 Günther Rall, arguably the best marksman in the Jagdwaffe.
9 Kurt Bühligen, who spent the entire war with JG 2 Richthofen.
10 Adolf Galland, one of the greatest fighter pilots of the war.
11 Spanish veteran Walter ‘Guile’ Oesau.
12 ‘Jochen’ Marseille.
13 Joachim Müncheberg.
14 Helmut Lent, a steady rather than spectacular scorer.
15 Walther Dahl, who scored heavily on the Eastern Front.
16 Pioneer night fighter Ludwig Becker returns from a sortie.
17 Heinz Knoke, who pioneered air-to-air bombing.
18 Heinrich, Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.
19 The doyen of night fighters: Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer.
20 The Führer presents the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross.
21 Experten of JG 26.
22 Walter Nowotny, the top-scoring Austrian pilot of the war.
23 Erich ‘Bubi’ Hartmann of JG 52.
24 Johannes ‘Macky’ Steinhoff as a young Leutnant in 1939.
25 Heinz ‘Pritzl’ Baer, one of the few ‘first-to-last’ Experten.
26 The Bf 109B, first used in the Spanish Civil War by J 88.
27 A Bf 109G-4 in Russia.
28 The Focke-Wulf FW 190A, which gave British pilots nightmares.
29 The Messerschmitt Bf 110C Zerstörer.
30 The Bf 110G.
31 The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket fighter.
32 The Heinkel 162A Volksjäger.
33 The Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe.
34 The Me 262B, the world’s first effective jet night fighter.
35 Two ex-Luftwaffe aircraft seen at the Champlin Fighter Museum.

Figures
1 Effect of Speed on Turn Radius
2 The Break
3 The Scissors
4 The Immelmann Turn
5 The Sandwich
6 Schwarm Formation and Cross-over Turn
7 The Decoy
8 Curve of Pursuit
9 Comparative Turning Abilities, Bf 109 vs Spitfire I
10 Typical Staffel Formation, Summer 1940
11 Galland’s Favoured ‘Up and Under’ Attack
12 Schöpfel’s Combat, 18 August 1940
13 Deflection Shooting
14 The Abschwung
15 Vector Roll Attack
16 Bühligen’s Victory, 13 June 1941
17 Boxing
18 Marseille against the Defensive Circle, North Africa
19 Ludwig Becker’s Night Stalk
20 Against the ‘Heavies’
21 Head-on Against the ‘Heavies’
22 Schräge Musik Attack
23 The Spiral Climb
24 Hartmann’s ‘Last Ditch’ Evasion Manoeuvre
25 The Roller-Coaster Attack
PREFACE
Flying has no equivalent, while war is the second oldest profession. Combined,
they are the ultimate in human experience. The fighter pilot is the modern
equivalent of the ancient single combat champion, whose worth was measured
by the number of his victories. Yet no champion of old ever approached the
number of victories attributed to the leading fighter pilots of the Luftwaffe in the
Second World War. What sort of men were they?
The truth is that fighter pilots are an international fraternity, a brotherhood
divided only by language and the national insignia on their aircraft. The German
pilots of the Second World War may have been more successful, but in essence
they were no different from those of any other nation or period. Many retained
an innate decency in spite of the slaughter, under the banner of chivalry. As
second highest scorer Gerd Barkhorn once told Erich Hartmann, ‘… you must
remember that one day that Russian pilot was the baby son of a beautiful
Russian girl. He has his right to life and love the same as we do.’
The war itself took a heavy toll, and the intervening years have not been kind.
Even as this book was being written, the redoubtable Adolf Galland, Georg-
Peter Eder—‘Lucky 13’—and ace of aces Erich Hartmann all ‘went upstairs’.
For those remaining, fifty years has faded the memory. As my friend Julius
Neumann, once a young Bf 109E pilot with II/JG 27 told me, ‘The heroes are
getting tired.’ This being the case, entirely new material was virtually
unobtainable.
I am therefore indebted to my friends Alfred Price and Edward Sims for
permission to quote extracts from their published works, and to Martin
Middlebrook for permission to use two passages from his book The Nuremberg
Raid. All sources used are listed in the Bibliography. My thanks are also due to
my friends at Cranwell College Library and the Royal Aeronautical Society, and
to Mr Brian Cocks of Helpston, for their generous help in making information
available.