Luftwaffe Fighter Aces
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Authors: Mike 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 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
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CONTENTS
The Fighter Ace
—
The
Luftwaffe
—
Basic Fighter Manoeuvres
—
The
Legion Kondor
The Invasion of Poland
—
The Campaign in the West
—
Blitzkrieg
—
Dunkirk
—
The
Experten
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
First Strike
—
Advance to Moscow
—
There and Back Again
—
Fighters of the Early Eastern Front
—
The
Experten
Focke-Wulf FW 190A
—
The British Response
—
The Campaign
—
The
Experten
Malta
—
Desert Song
—
‘
Torch’
—
The
Experten
Intruders
—
The Defence of the Reich
—
The Aircraft
—
The
Experten
The Defence of the Reich
—
Gefechtsverband
—
The Fighters
—
The
Experten
Window on Hamburg
—
Silk Purses from Sows
’
Ears
—
New Threats
—
Schräge Musik
—
Nuremberg
—
The Beginning of the End
—
The Aircraft
—
The
Experten
The Fighters
—
Flying the Bf 109G
—
The
Experten
The Jets and their Opponents
—
Schwalbe
in Action
—
Me 262 in Service
—
The
Experten
Overclaiming
—
Relative Scores
—
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall
…
1.
Luftwaffe
Fighter Unit Organisation
—
2.
Day Fighter
Experten
—
3. Night Fighter
Experten
—
4. Strike Rates
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.
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.
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.
28 The Focke-Wulf FW 190A, which gave British pilots nightmares.
29 The Messerschmitt Bf 110C
Zerstörer.
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
6
Schwarm
Formation and Cross-over Turn
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
16 Bühligen’s Victory, 13 June 1941
18 Marseille against the Defensive Circle, North Africa
19 Ludwig Becker’s Night Stalk
21 Head-on Against the ‘Heavies’
24 Hartmann’s ‘Last Ditch’ Evasion Manoeuvre
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.