Mike Spick - Aces of the Reich: The Making of A Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot

Aces of the Reich: The Making of a Luftwaffe Fighter-Pilot

A Greenhill Book

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited
www.greenhillbooks.com

This paperback edition published in 2013 by Frontline Books

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS
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Copyright Mike Spick, 2006

The right of Mike Spick 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: 978-1-84832-722-1
PDF ISBN: 978-1-47387-753-5
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47387-752-8
PRC ISBN: 978-1-47387-751-1

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Photographs

Graphs and Diagrams

I started a wide left-hand turn, handling the controls of the sensitive high-speed aircraft carefully so as not to lose any of its momentum. The engines were humming evenly and without vibration. Just at that moment a swarm of Lightnings American twin-boom fighters shot across beneath us

With a shout of Lightnings down to port! I found myself in a steep curving climb, partly to avoid the possibility of any others that might be above us taking us by surprise, and partly to get into position to attack. Fhrmann (my wingman) had tried in vain to stay with me, but was now hopelessly left behind some 1,000 metres (more than 3,000 feet) below, undoubtedly looking all over the place for me

It all happened very fast. I could not worry about Fhrmann; I had so much excess speed (and was gaining more the longer I dived) that I had my hands full looking after myself. The safety catch on my weapons had to be released. I uncaged the reflex sight a luminous area on the windshield in front of me and it promptly began to wander all over the place. We were trying for the first time to fire with a gyroscopic sight that allowed for lead and obliged the pilot to line the sight up with the target Then the Lightnings loomed up terrifyingly fast in front of me, and it was only for the space of seconds that I was able to get into firing position behind one of the machines on the outside of the formation. And as if they had received prior warning, they swung round smartly as soon as I opened fire. Pop, pop, pop, went my cannon in furious succession. I tried to follow a Lightnings tight turn but the gravity pressed me down on my parachute with such force that I had trouble keeping my head in position to line the sight up with him. The sight was still wandering all over the windscreen and I shot too short; I thought I could see the acceleration drag the shells down to pass harmlessly below the Lightnings fuselages. Then a shudder went through my aircraft as my leading-edge flaps sprang out: I had exceeded the permissible gravity load.

The lightnings made for the ground in tight spirals. No use trying to follow them: the Me 262 had no dive brakes. It was agony every time, losing height without picking up so much speed that the aircraft became uncontrollable.

Oberst Johannes Steinhoff, 176 victories

It was April 1945. The very experienced Steinhoff had opened his account as long ago as 1939. Since then, he had flown in the West, against Britain, and in the Soviet Union, North Africa and the Mediterranean, then on home defence against the American bomber fleets. Now he flew the worlds most advanced fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262. He commenced the combat with the classic air combat advantages of height and position. His opponents were Lockheed P-38 Lightnings of the USAAF, a type widely regarded as a turkey. He was never at any point on the defensive. While the Lightnings were more numerous, this did little more than to provide the German Experte with a target-rich environment. And yet he failed to score.

In fact, this combat was a throwback to a design controversy dating from 1916. The question was: which is the most desirable quality for a fighter; performance or manoeuvrability? Both had their advocates. Performance consisted of three elements; speed, ceiling, and rate of climb. Manoeuvrability was basically the ability to out-turn ones opponent.

A speed advantage allowed a fighter to overhaul a slower opponent and attack it. By allowing an attacker to close quickly from visual distance to guns range, it made a surprise attack easier to achieve. Finally, it made disengagement easier if circumstances were not propitious. A higher ceiling potentially gave an altitude advantage which in a dive could be traded for speed. Rate of climb allowed an altitude advantage to be obtained; it also allowed a pilot to remove himself vertically from a dogfight if things got too hot.

Manoeuvre gave fewer advantages, although these were often regarded as critical. On the defensive, it allowed a rapid turn out of the line of fire which a faster, if less manoeuvrable attacker, was unable to follow. On the attack, the ability to turn inside an opponent allowed the sights to be held on target for longer.

Ideally, a fighter needed performance and manoeuvrability advantages, but as turning rate and radius are functions of speed, for a variety of reasons, this was not possible.

In the combat described, the turbojet-powered Me 262 was more than 120mph (190kph) faster than the propeller-driven Lightning in level flight, and could outclimb it with ease. When sighted, the Lightnings were probably at combat cruise, and a reasonable assumption of the speed differential would be about 200 mph (320 kph). So there was Steinhoff, with both speed and altitude advantage.

But he did not attack straightaway. Instead he pulled high, suspecting a trap. It is axiomatic that for any high-scoring fighter ace, the first priority is survival. The logic is simple. If you dont survive, you dont build up a score. By the seventh year of the war, Steinhoffs survival instincts were finely honed. And by April 1945, only a rump of the Jagdwaffe was left to face hordes of Allied fighters. For nearly three years, being increasingly heavily outnumbered had become a way of life.

On spotting the Lightnings below, his instinctive reaction was to assume that there might be others above and behind. So he pulled high to clear his tail. As Steinhoff himself commented, years of practice at sneaking up on the enemy, dodging out of his way, and hiding in the infinity of sky, had developed new and unknown instincts in the few who had survived.

So quickly did he react that his regular Kacmarek (wingman) Leutnant Fhrmann, who was probably searching the sky astern for danger, was caught flat-footed and left trailing far below. Given the outstanding performance of the Me 262, this was no big deal. Even if attacked, Fhrmann could probably look after himself. More importantly Steinhoff now had an altitude advantage over the American fighters.