Luftwaffe Fighter Aces

 

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 be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail:[email protected]
Website:
www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

 

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.

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