Christian Huber - A Prisoner of Stalin: The Chilling Story of a Luftwaffe Pilot Shot Down and Captured on the Eastern Front

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Originally published in Germany, as Vom Himmel in die Hlle , 2015 by Rosenheimer Verlagshaus

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

FRONTLINE BOOKS

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Copyright Christian Huber, 2022

The right of Christian Huber to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-52673-321-4

ePUB ISBN 978-1-52673-322-1

MOBI ISBN 978-1-52673-322-1

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The course of military events corresponds to historical truth. The names of the persons mentioned are to the largest extent authentic.

Gerhard Ehlert belongs to the few survivors of an elite Luftwaffe unit that undertook night-time reconnaissance sorties over the Russian regions during the Second World War. Although he came from a parental home that was against the Nazi regime, he volunteered. Ehlert completed twenty-two operational sorties, often landing his aircraft blindly in fog. However, in June 1944 he was shot down and taken prisoner by the Russians. His time in the camps changed his life forever.

This eyewitness description is based on the recollections of a surviving German Luftwaffe officer.

At 17.00 hours on 14 June 1944, Leutnant Gerhard Ehlert and his crew from 2. Nachtaufklrungsstaffel were assigned to take photos of the railway and roads around Sarny following an attack the previous night. They took off from Baranowitschi in a Do 217M-1 coded K7+FK, apparently the personal aircraft of their Staffelkapitn Hauptmann Paul Palmer, at around 21.30 hours and headed east. Approaching the target, they climbed to an altitude of 1,500m and prepared to take photographs by using flash bombs, but the bomb doors did not open, so they went down to 200m for visual reconnaissance and reported via radio.

However, on their return flight the Beobachter, Oberfeldwebel Hanns Schlotter, became unsure of their location. The aircraft then flew into the range of a Soviet flak battery which opened fire and quickly damaged the rudder. The last message that Luftflotte 2 heard from Ehlert and his crew was at 01.15 hours.

The right engine had been hit first and burst into flame. The Dornier slowed down and gradually lost altitude. Ehlert was sitting in the front on the left, behind him the Bordmechaniker, about 50cm higher than the Beobachter. This meant that their feet were not injured when they hit the ground, but the Beobachter, who sat lower in the cockpit, had his legs torn off in the crash-landing and he died almost immediately. Shrapnel had also hit the cockpit and mortally wounded the Bordfunker, Unteroffizier Karl-Heinz Williges, but Ehlert had managed to land in the Pripet Marshes. He was able to climb out and Feldwebel Wilhelm Burr, the Bordmechaniker, also got out of the burning wreckage but with severe burns to hands and face.

Both survivors wanted to get to the German lines, some 60 km to the west. Resting by day and walking at night they struggled on. On the second day they attempted to get some food in a small village, but villagers informed Soviet soldiers and they were soon captured.

Gerhard Ehlert did not return home until December 1949.

Chris Goss

Calmly the young pilot pulls the joystick towards himself. The heavy aircraft dips its nose slightly and the two Daimler-Benz engines show their mettle. The warm summer air flows beneath the wings of the twin-engine aircraft and lifts it gently. Gravity presses the men into their seats, and they feel entirely safe when they hear the retracting undercarriage click into place. They now feel the vibrations caused by the propellers in their lightweight suits, which are made of a light-coloured summer fabric that they learn to love during these hot days in the Pripet swamps. Due to these they sweat much less than their comrades in the thick grey uniforms. The humming of the engines radiates through to their skin and they feel it all over their bodies. And thus they head out into the dusk to the accompaniment of loud roaring. The last rays of the Russian sun trail behind them and die down, before they and their pterosaur are cloaked completely by the night. Their black bird, which can hardly be detected from the ground at night, has enough fuel for six hours. Three hours out, three hours back.

Turn right. Straight. Up there in front, slight turn left. Straight! the observer murmurs at second intervals into his throat microphone. He is crouching inside the huge glass cockpit below the pilot and has the best view down. This is like being in a Mercedes Silver Arrow driving at 300 kilometres an hour on the motorway; just with a black blindfold, smirks the aerial gunner, who is sitting at the very back of the narrow aircraft and as usual has nothing to do. At night the Russian fighters do not take off from their airfields; unlike the Tommies, they still do not have radar in summer 1944.

Its almost a little lonely up here. Music wouldnt be bad now, crackles throatily in the headphones of the four men in their humming long-range reconnaissance plane. Then the gunner looks at his wristwatch: Oh professor, what about that radio message? Those at home need to know that were still alive.

The professors name is actually Unteroffizier Karl-Heinz Williges. He is the baby of the crew and is on his first real combat flight sortie. The men call him the professor because he wears glasses and appears hugely intelligent because of them. He is having difficulty fighting off tiredness and his thoughts of home, of his mother. He has slept badly again during the day because his memories of the last training sortie near the front are still haunting him.