Hitler's Jet Plane (18 page)

Initially all seemed to go well. Leutnant Schall was first to report in: ‘Indians [slang for ‘enemy’] in sight, I am attacking,’ he said laconically. On the ground the observers all wore headphones through which the aerial fight could be followed. Leutnant Schall:

‘We’ve knocked down one.’ A few minutes later came Wegmann’s report: ‘We are in contact with the enemy,’ and then briefly: ‘I have shot down a Mustang.’ Transmission ceased for a while. The silence was interrupted by more shooting. Leutnant Schall: ‘My wingman has been shot down. I saw the aircraft crash in flames.’ Outside the small hotel on the Bramsche road housing Preusker’s radar centre the group searched the sky. Cloud cover was only five-tenths but nothing could be seen. Schall: ‘My machine is on fire, I’m baling out.’ Two enemy planes shot down for the price of two Me 262s!

Karl Schnörrer cast his eyes over the group which had Nowotny, Galland and Keller at its centre. Nowotny’s face showed anger and bitter disappointment. Suddenly he turned to his driver standing beside Schnörrer and said, ‘Come on, Gadecke, drive me to Achmer. You too, Quax, I’m going up.’ Seconds later he was in the passenger seat of his BMW and ignored General Galland’s command, ‘Stay here, Nowotny!’

Schnörrer slipped into the back seat. He would have liked nothing better than to fly as Nowotny’s wingman as he had done on more than 250 occasions on the Russian front but his knees were still in plaster from his last crash and for that reason he had not been trained for the Me 262.

At Achmer airfield Wegmann had landed. He could have flown alongside Nowotny but his aircraft had been shot at and went directly into the workshops. A pilot at Hesepe field – this must have been Schall – received orders to rendezvous with Nowotny in the air. Therefore the commander took off alone.

As Gadecke and Schnörrer arrived back at the control centre another bomber mass and its fighter escort was passing overhead. The bombers were occasionally visible through broken cloud, each four-engined bomber a black speck trailing a long silver stream. The earlier formation had already bombed and was heading for home.

The radio crackled and they heard Nowotny’s calm voice. ‘I am attacking.’ There followed some bursts of fire and dull thumps, followed by a long period when he was concentrating on the job in hand and made no contact. Suddenly his voice was heard, rapid and alarmed. ‘Shit, shit, my turbine.’

Schnörrer stared at the sky as if he could help him. ‘Jump, Walter,’ he whispered repeatedly. He knew from Russia that his commander preferred to attempt the most dangerous landings with the undercarriage retracted rather than use his parachute. Perhaps Nowotny was worried about the Mustangs over the airfield – the incident involving Schall was still fresh in his mind. Actually there was no need to shoot at the pilot hanging from his parachute straps – the dirty deed could be done by flying just above the canopy and then climbing quickly: the silk would deflate in the propeller slipstream.

Nowotny made a last transmission: ‘I have just shot down my third... left engine is out... I am being attacked... I have been hit...’ The rest of what he said was garbled. On the ground the onlookers’ anxious wait came to an end as suddenly the whistling noise typical of an Me 262 became audible and a jet shot out from the clouds, approaching and clearly shedding height. Just at that moment the sun broke through and glinted on a group of Mustang fighters falling towards the German aircraft in an almost vertical dive. There were several bursts of fire. Nobody gave the jet a chance. It was barely a few hundred metres up and would be an easy kill when it came in to land.

The Me 262 curved into an ever steeper incline and disappeared from sight. A few seconds later in the distance there was a dull thud. No fire, no mushroom cloud of smoke. All over. Nobody could accept it. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t Nowotny, perhaps it was Schall?’ a voice suggested. Schnörrer moved up to the General der Jagdflieger. ‘That was Nowotny, Herr General.’

‘No!’ Galland shouted. As the General jerked round, Quax saw that his face was graven in stone. Perhaps he was hoping against hope that it was somebody else. But even Galland couldn’t make crashes unhappen.

‘I am sorry General, but yes, it was him,’ Schnörrer replied. In tears he turned away abruptly and joined Hauptmann Werner Wenzel in Nowotny’s car. They drove off immediately for the crash site, the others following in their official vehicles. The small convoy stopped once or twice to check that they were heading in the right direction and eventually found the location on the edge of a wood near the small village of Epe close to Bramsche. The local fire brigade and an ambulance had got there very quickly but found a scene of utter devastation. There had been no explosion or fire, just an eerie stillness around the deep crater from which jutted bizarre scraps of the aircraft. Walter Nowotny was gone without a trace.

For Karl Schnörrer, Günther Wegmann and other pilots of the Kommando the self-questioning began. Why had Nowotny taken off against Galland’s order? To what extent had his dreams and the assertions of General Keller affected his judgement? Schall seems to have been the pilot ordered to fly as Nowotny’s wingman – had he made the rendezvous in the air? It seems doubtful. Therefore had Nowotny attacked alone? Was he trying to land the jet on one engine? Did the controls fail or was the Mustang attack the fatal event? Nowotny was still alive in the last phase of the dive and had probably tried to bale out at the last moment, for his half-opened and torn parachute pack was found near the crater. But what actually happened really remains something of a mystery.

Kommando Nowotny did not survive the death of its commander long. It existed from 1 October to 12 November 1944. Of the thirty aircraft supplied to the unit during that period, four were still airworthy on the last day. Twenty-six had been lost through enemy action or accident. The Kommando achieved between twenty-two and twenty-six victories. Thus the ratio of victories and losses was 1:1, an unsatisfactory situation in view of the superior speed of the jet. The delay before the Me 262 fighter was at last thrust into the front line lasted many months. This led – for reasons which are easily understandable – to a hasty, ill-considered and improvised state of operational readiness. In effect, the premiere was staged before the rehearsal and this moreover after a far too short period of normal working-up. In view of the war situation, time could not be spared either for a thorough training or to gain experience with the machine. ‘The bird eats or dies’ was now the byword, and there was precious little choice. That applied not only to the Me 262 units but also the Me 163s, the
Wilde Sau
night-fighters or the ramming Kommandos. Everything was in short supply: experienced pilots, instructors, fuel, safe transport. One thing which did still function was propaganda. Many clung to it, fearing the truth. The war had long passed the point where it might have still been possible to throw in the towel to avoid the final cruel act. Unconditional surrender was the only term on offer: total war demanded total defeat.

The figures are sobering. Between 1940 and 1945 nearly two million tons of bombs were dropped on Germany and the occupied territories. The Luftwaffe dropped 74,000 tons of bombs on England, about 3.7% of that amount. The number of dead after the raid on Hamburg alone was estimated at 60,000, equal to the total killed by bombing in all Great Britain throughout the war. The RAF dropped 700,000 tons of bombs on Germany and its aircraft flew 400,000 missions. Between 1939 and 1945, the Reich lost 72,000 military aircraft of all kinds.

The missions flown by Kommando Nowotny exhausted its strength within six short weeks. The grounds were only too obvious: the numerical superiority of the enemy fighter force made the siting of airfields close to the front, such as Achmer and Hesepe, imprudent. For enemy fighters it was no more than a cat’s leap to keep close watch on these airfields every day and no greater risk than normal to attack jet aircraft taking off and landing there.

The majority of German fighter pilots were not yet ‘at home’ with the control stick as they were with the Me 109, Me 110 or Fw 190 and, since there was no basic combat training, not a few had their first taste of action after having flown the jet on only two or three occasions.

The Me 262 was not difficult to fly. This was an advantage on a peaceful training circuit but could create overconfidence. Kommando Thierfelder served primarily for pre-operational working up. Errors were generally forgiven by the aircraft. Kommando Nowotny was exclusively for operations. Under combat conditions it was suddenly very different. A careless turn, a high-speed pursuit after an enemy in a dive, a too-hasty shove at the throttle lever, forgetting absent-mindedly how long one had spent in the air: all these could have nasty or perhaps fatal consequences.

General Galland’s order for a transfer back to Lechfeld for a battle pause, retraining and refitting came a few days after Nowotny’s death. After looking over Achmer and Hesepe, Fritz Wendel reported:

Kommando Nowotny was ordered back to Lechfeld for pilots and ground crew to retrain following the four losses of 8 November. This was on General Galland’s order. I had already spoken personally on the weaknesses and faults of this Kommando at its formation. The pilots were only partially trained for fighter missions and thrown into action after only two training flights with the Me 262. Nothing had improved up to the time of Major Nowotny’s death, which is now succeeded by General Galland ordering a period of further working up at Lechfeld. The Kommando needs eight to ten days to achieve full battle strength . . .

At Lechfeld, Major Erich Hohagen, an experienced fighter pilot, took over as Nowotny’s successor. Wegmann remained as adjutant. By mid-December 1944 new aircraft had been flown in and flight-tested and a new draft of pilots afforded conversion training and a short technical course. By then Galland had specified as future operational bases the aerodromes at Brandenburg-Briest, Parchim and Oranienburg – all on the outskirts of Berlin. Kommando Nowotny was renamed JG7. Major Hohagen was named commander of III/JG7. Groups I and II were formed at Neumünster. Oberst Steinhoff, who had been involved with the Reich air defences with his old squadron since the retreats from North Africa and Italy, was appointed JG7 commodore.

More precious weeks were lost to unproductive maintenance or the laborious construction of ground installations. After Hohagen’s III/JG7 had been transferred, the major delays were the time-consuming rail deliveries of aircraft and equipment from Lechfeld, Schwäbisch Hall or even Leipheim. The trains were under perpetual threat of attack from low-flying enemy aircraft throughout the day. Whence the order came that new aircraft should be delivered by train cannot be established. It meant that aircraft which had been flown to one of the three airfields had to be dismantled for transport by rail, this being a 500-kilometre journey at the mercy of enemy fighters which roamed at low level virtually unopposed. The actual figure of Me 262s destroyed while being transported by rail is not known. Those that arrived unscathed had then to be reassembled and flight tested again. Messerschmitt AG built an assembly hangar with all the necessary equipment at Brandenburg-Briest, but this was all much slower than having the aircraft ferried in by air. Messerschmitt’s chief test pilot, Fritz Wendel, was in charge of flight-testing at Brandenburg-Briest and provided the official explanation for the long drawn-out transport operation and duplicated flight testing. Since there were insufficient pilots available to ferry the completed machines from assembly hangar to operational bases, the task would have fallen to operational pilots, thus depriving their squadrons of manpower. These hops from place to place were not without their attendant dangers from enemy fighters and it was considered preferable on the whole to transfer the jets by rail at night. There was undoubtedly some wisdom in this decision, for ferry pilots had only the briefest conversion course before climbing into the cockpit of an Me 262, and losses of aircraft through pilot error were high. All the same, to the operational pilots of JG7 twiddling their thumbs in the mess there was no sense in the order, for even a delivery flight enabled more experience of the aircraft to be gained, and if it were armed, enemy fighters could be engaged should they appear.

Meanwhile the 8th and 9th Squadrons of Nowotny’s Kommando had been attached to III/JG7. 8th Squadron, under Leutnant Schall, operated from Oranienburg, while 9th Squadron was transferred to Parchim under the leadership of Hauptmann Georg Eder, a young and successful fighter pilot. Erich Hohagen remained at Brandenburg-Briest with the Group Staff.

At this time there was some disquiet in Allied circles concerning the Me 262 story. We know today that the much-delayed debut of the Me 262 jet fighter was something of a nightmare to our Western opponents and for the following reasons. The advance of Allied ground forces following the Normandy landings tied down a large part of their aerial forces. In December 1944 the Ardennes Offensive took the Americans very much by surprise, and in general their bomber offensive was not achieving the effect which had been expected of it. Furthermore some doubts were harboured regarding the ability of the Russians to press on to final success – or perhaps it was the case that this Soviet victory was not really wanted deep down.

General Galland stated in his book that at a conference in Versailles on 11 January 1945 the Allied air chiefs were discussing the possibility of a longer duration to the war than hitherto. The obvious step-up in German fighter-aircraft production was the cause, and General Spaatz repeated personally his concerns about the Me 262 jet whose numbers were now estimated at about 700 (Galland put the figure at 564 completed aircraft at the end of 1944).

It seems likely that neither Spaatz nor his colleagues had knowledge of the various difficulties obstructing the deployment of the jet as a fighter, otherwise they might have had fewer worries. If their intelligence services did have wind of the altercations between Hitler and the Luftwaffe High Command, however, the disconcerting successes almost daily of such fighter jets as were operational must have given them food for thought. A speed of from 300 to 400 kph in excess of the best Allied piston-engined fighters was not the only shock. Despite the defeats in the south, and the pincers squeezing them between west and east, the Luftwaffe was still able to maintain a high level of operational readiness among its pilots, and its fighters remained a potent force.