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    Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces
    Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces
    Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces
    Ebook226 pages2 hours

    Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces

    By John Weal

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    About this ebook

    The Defence of the Reich campaign completes Osprey's coverage of the German aces that flew the Fw 190 during World War 2.

    Renowned aviation author and artist, John Weal, presents the last volume of Fw 190 Aces not previously covered in the Aircraft of the Aces series. From mid-1942 until the end of the war, German fighter pilots were deployed in the defence of the homeland in an effort to halt the near-constant bombing raids by Britain and America. This book tells their story, from the moment when the Luftwaffe began to retreat to the dying days of the Reich.

    Using previously unpublished photographs, this book charts the story of the men who earned their status as aces while fighting a hopeless battle to protect the land and the people they loved.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateOct 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782005117
    Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces
    Author

    John Weal

    John Weal is Osprey's primary Luftwaffe author and artist. He has written, illustrated and/or supplied artwork for several titles in the Aircraft of the Aces series. He owns one of the largest private collections of original German-language literature from World War 2, and his research is firmly based on this huge archive.

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      Book preview

      Fw 190 Defence of the Reich Aces - John Weal

      COMMENTARY

      GUARDIANS OF THE NORTHERN SHORES

      When the famous American aviator Colonel Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, visited Berlin in July 1936 he was welcomed at Staaken airfield by Oberst Kastner on behalf of Luftwaffe C-in-C Hermann Göring, and by Herr Wolfgang von Gronau, President of the German Aero Club. Lindbergh was hugely impressed by what he saw on his conducted tours of some of the Third Reich’s leading military and sports aviation facilities. At one luncheon given in his honour at Döberitz he was moved to propose a toast. ‘To the bombers – may they always be slower. To the pursuit machines – may they always be faster!’

      Lindbergh’s words were greeted by a roar of approval from his hosts for Döberitz was home to Major Carl Vieck’s I./JG 132 ‘Richthofen’, and his table companions flew Germany’s then fastest ‘pursuit machine’, the Heinkel He 51 fighter.

      While the ill-judged toast was no doubt music to the ears of Major Vieck and the pilots of his three Staffeln, it is unlikely that many more than a handful of the countless thousands of American boys currently enjoying their school vacations in this summer of 1936 were even aware of the sentiments being expressed by their illustrious compatriot in far-off Germany. It was perhaps just as well, for in little more than six years’ time many of those selfsame schoolboys would be manning the bombers of the American Eighth Air Force high in the skies above Hitler’s Third Reich, trying desperately to squeeze the last ounce of power and speed out of their B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators as they sought to escape from the deadly attentions of the Luftwaffe’s fighters.

      The first daylight bombing raids on Germany had been launched within hours of Britain declaring war on 3 September 1939. However, the Royal Air Force’s twin-engined bombers proved totally inadequate for the task. After a series of horrendous losses, the British had been forced to restrict their air offensive against the Third Reich almost exclusively to the hours of darkness. Following the disastrous ‘Battle of the German Bight’ on 18 December 1939, when 17 out of a force of 22 Wellingtons sent to attack Wilhelmshaven were either lost or written-off, three years of relative aerial calm had settled along Germany’s North Sea shores.

      Throughout this period the northern sector served partly as a ‘nursery slope’ for newly activated Jagdgruppen needing to acclimatise themselves to operational service, and partly as a rest and recuperation area for established Gruppen on their way either from or to other more active fronts. For the first two of those three years very little happened as an ever-changing miscellany of different Gruppen and individual Staffeln guarded the North Sea frontier against an enemy rendered conspicuous only by his absence.

      From small acorns. The Eighth Air Force’s first mission was undertaken on 4 July 1942 by six US-crewed RAF Boston light bombers. Two failed to return. The aircraft seen here is not one of that unfortunate pair, however, but a similar machine (of No 88 Sqn RAF) brought down by Hauptmann Johannes Naumann, Staffelkapitän of 6./JG 26, over a year later on 26 July 1943, by which time the budding Defence of the Reich ace – seen here sitting atop his prize – already had two American Flying Fortresses to his name

      Then, on 11 December 1941, exactly one week short of the second anniversary of the ‘Battle of the German Bight’, and following hard on the heels of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on America. Suddenly the future looked very different. The Führer’s announcement heralded the inevitable appearance of a new opponent on the European scene, and one, moreover, who held totally different views on strategic bombing from those of the RAF, whose Bomber Command was by this time fully and irrevocably committed to pursuing its night offensive.

      The Americans were firm believers in daylight precision bombing, and they were to lose as little time as possible in putting those beliefs into practice. The first aircrews of the embryonic Eighth Air Force arrived in the United Kingdom on 11 May 1942, five months to the day since Hitler’s declaration of war. They immediately began training with an RAF squadron that was equipped with Douglas Boston light bombers.

      Symbolically, the Eighth Air Force’s first operation was flown on American Independence Day, 4 July 1942. It was a combined Anglo-American mission with 12 RAF Bostons – six crewed by Americans – being despatched to bomb Luftwaffe airfields in Holland. Three of the Bostons failed to return. One, flown by an RAF crew, fell victim to a Luftwaffe fighter, while the other two, crewed by the USAAF, were both shot down by flak. They were to be the American squadron’s only combat losses as part of the Eighth Air Force. After two more operations flown under their own colours (albeit in ex-RAF machines), the 15th Bomb Squadron (Light) was transferred to the Mediterranean theatre in September to join the USAAF’s Twelfth Air Force.

      Even before the Bostons’ Independence Day mission, the first of the Eight Air Force’s four-engined ‘heavies’ – the B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 97th Bomb Group (BG) – had already touched down in England. Twelve of their number then flew the Eighth Air Force’s first heavy bomber raid on 17 August 1942. The target was the marshalling yard at Rouen/Sotteville, in northern France. All the aircraft got back safely, although two bore evidence of slight flak damage.

      A further three weeks would pass before the first European B-17 combat loss occurred. This dubious honour fell to the 97th BG’s B-17F 41-24445 Southern Belle, which was part of a mixed force of some 50 Flying Fortresses sent to bomb the French Potez aircraft factory at Méaulte, east of Amiens, on 6 September. It was brought down by the Fw 190 flown by Hauptmann Karl-Heinz ‘Conny’ Meyer, the Gruppenkommandeur of II./JG 26. Little more than ten minutes after Meyer’s victim had crash-landed northwest of Amiens, one of his pilots, Oberfeldwebel Willi Roth of 4. Staffel, was credited with another of the Flying Fortresses. 41-9026 Baby Doll, a B-17E of the 92nd BG, made it back as far as the coast before going down into the Channel about four miles off Le Tréport.

      This was just the beginning of a long and bloody conflict for both attackers and defenders alike. Although the Americans’ intentions were already clear, for the moment they were content to cut their operational teeth on cross-Channel and short-range missions against targets situated in the coastal regions of northern and western France and the Low Countries. Then, as their numbers and confidence grew, they would begin to push deeper into northwest Europe. It could only be a matter of time before they entered German airspace and started to attack targets within the Reich itself.

      The Luftwaffe High Command was under no illusions. It knew that the American heavy bombers were coming. Two of the Luftwaffe’s most experienced Jagdgeschwader, JGs 2 and 26, had long been stationed in northwest Europe as the first line of defence against daylight incursions by RAF fighters and light bombers. So important was their role deemed to be that by the summer of 1942 both these units had been almost entirely equipped with the most advanced fighter in the Luftwaffe’s armoury, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

      Although not part of the Defence of the Reich organisation proper in the early years, the two western-based Jagdgeschwader, JGs 2 and 26, often provided the first line of defence against incursions by US heavy bombers. A mechanic quickly scrambles out of the way as the pilot of 7./JG 2’s ‘White 9’ guns his engine

      But what of Germany’s own North Sea coastal belt? The launch of a daylight strategic bombing offensive by the Eighth Air Force against the Reich would automatically transform this hitherto relatively thinly defended backwater into one of the main aerial approach routes into the heart of Hitler’s empire. What was being done to strengthen this potentially vital sector?

      In fact, the first moves towards this end had been made as far back as the winter of 1940-41, when three hitherto completely separate Jagdstaffeln deployed across northwest Germany had been amalgamated to form a new Jagdgruppe, I./JG 1. There had been an earlier I./JG 1 dating back to before the war, but this unit had been redesignated to become III./JG 27 at the start of the Battle of Britain.

      It would be almost another nine months before a II./JG 1 was added to the Luftwaffe’s order of battle. Unlike I./JG 1, however, this new formation was created not from scratch, but by the simple process of redesignating an already existing Jagdgruppe. The experienced I./JG 3, which was a veteran of the Battles of France and Britain, had just returned to Germany after participating in the opening rounds of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In the early weeks of 1942 two further Gruppen were brought into being. III. and IV./JG 1 were both made up out of Ergänzungs and Einsatzstaffeln from other Jagdgeschwader (specifically, from JGs 2, 27, 52 and 2, 26, 51, respectively).

      After being transferred up into Denmark and southern Norway in February, the first short-lived IV./JG 1 was incorporated into the embryonic JG 5, however, and a replacement IV./JG 1 had to be put together during March and April 1942 using intakes from various fighter training schools.

      Despite the decidedly heterogeneous nature of its background, JG 1 was quickly slotted into position along the right-hand flank of the unbroken chain of Luftwaffe day fighter defences of northwest Europe that now stretched from the Bay of Biscay to the Kattegat. By the late summer of 1942, when the Eighth Air Force was beginning to make its first exploratory forays into northern France, three of the Geschwader’s four component Gruppen had also been re-equipped with the Fw 190 to bring it up almost on a par with neighbouring JGs 2 and 26.

      By January 1943 the stage was thus set, and one cast of players had already taken their places. Guarding the all-important German Bight sector, JG 1’s four Gruppen were deployed in an arc from southern Norway down into the Netherlands as they awaited the first attack on their homeland by American heavy bombers. That attack was to be delivered on 27 January 1943.

      Despite all the time, effort and resources each side had put into preparing for this moment, the Eighth Air Force’s raid on Wilhelmshaven – the opening blow to be struck in the daylight Defence of the Reich campaign – proved somewhat inconclusive. This did not prevent both protagonists from publicly claiming it as a victory, however. The northern German port of Wilhelmshaven had also been the target for the RAF on 18 December 1939, and like the 22 Wellingtons that had carried out that raid just over three years before, the 64 B-17s despatched against the port on 27 January 1943 went in unescorted.

      There, the similarity between the two missions ended. The Americans were not cut to pieces in a second great ‘Battle of the German Bight’. In fact, they were intercepted by just one Gruppe – the Bf 109s of I./JG 1 stationed at Jever, some eight miles outside Wilhelmshaven. The Flying Fortresses lived up to their name, for their defensive firepower, combined with the Bf 109 pilots’ inexperience in tackling these new adversaries, kept their losses to a minimum. Although I./JG 1 somewhat optimistically claimed five B-17s destroyed, only one bomber was actually shot down.

      Things did not always go smoothly. ‘White 2’ of 7./JG 26 was involved in a taxiing accident at Wevelghem in August 1942. After repair, this machine later went to JG 51 in the USSR, where it crashed near Smolensk early in 1943

      Meanwhile, a smaller force of 27 B-24 Liberators approaching Wilhelmshaven on a more southerly route had failed to find the target altogether due to ‘bad weather and poor navigation’. This formation then fell foul of elements of the two Fw 190-equipped Gruppen of JG 1 based in Holland, II. and IV./JG 1. Two of the Liberators, both from the 44th BG, went down into the shallows between the Dutch coast and the offshore island

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