Stuka Pilot

1. FROM UMBRELLA TO DIVE BOMBER

1924. My home is the rectory of the little village of Seiferdau in Silesia; I am eight. One Sunday my father and mother go into the neighboring town of Schweidnitz for an “Aviation Day.” I am furious that I am not allowed to go with them, and when they return my parents have to tell me over and over again what they have seen there. And so I hear about a man who jumped from a great height with a parachute and came safely down to earth. This delights me, and I badger my sisters for an exact description of the man and the parachute. Mother sews me a little model, I attach a stone to it and am proud when stone and parachute slowly drift to the ground. I think to myself that what a stone can do I must be able to do too, and when I am left alone for a couple of hours the following Sunday I lose no time in exploiting my new discovery.

Upstairs to the first floor! I climb on to the window sill with an umbrella, open it up, take a quick look down, and before I have time to be afraid I jump. I land on a soft flower-bed and am surprised to find that I have twisted every muscle and actually broken a leg. In the tricky way in which umbrellas are apt to behave, the thing has turned inside out and hardly braked my fall. But nevertheless I abide by my resolve: I will be an airman.

After a brief flirtation with modem languages at the local school I take up classics, and learn Greek and Latin. At Sagen, Niesky, Görlitz and Lauban—my father is moved to these different parishes in the lovely province of Silesia—my schooling is completed. My holidays are devoted almost exclusively to sport, including motor-cycling; athletics in summer, and skiing in winter lay the foundations of a robust constitution for later life. I enjoy everything; so I do not specialize in any particular field. Our little village does not offer very much scope—my knowledge of sporting tackle is derived solely from magazines—so I practice pole-jumping by using a long tree-prop to vault over my mother’s clothesline. Thus later with a proper bamboo pole I can clear a respectable height… As a ten year old I go off into the Eulengebirge, twenty three miles away, with the six foot long skis given to me as a Christmas present, and teach myself skiing… I stand a couple of planks resting on a sawing-horse of my father’s, this gives me an upward slope. I give the contraption the once—over to make sure it is firmly fixed. No flunking now—I open the throttle of my motorbike and sail up the boards… and over. I land on the other side, swerve wildly and back again for another run at the planks and the trusty sawing-horse! It never enters my head that in addition to all this I ought to be a good scholar, much to my parents’ distress: I play almost every conceivable prank on my teachers. But the question of my future becomes a more serious problem as matriculation looms nearer. One of my sisters is studying medicine, and consequently the possibility of finding the large sum of money needed to have me trained as a civil air-pilot does not even come under consideration—a pity. So I decide to become a sports instructor.

Quite unexpectedly the Luftwaffe is created, and with it a demand for applicants for a reserve of officers.

Black sheep that I am, I see little hope of passing the difficult entrance examination. Several fellows I know, rather older than myself, who have previously tried to get in have been unlucky. Apparently only sixty out of six hundred candidates will be selected, and I cannot imagine any likelihood of my being among this ten per cent. Fate, however, disposes otherwise; and in August 1936 I have in my pocket the notification of my admission to the Military School at Wildpark-Werder for next December. Two months Labour Service work on the regulation of the Neisse at Muskau follow matriculation in the autumn. In the first term at Wildpark-Werder we recruits are put through the mill. Our infantry training is completed in six months.

Aircraft we see only from the ground, with an especial longing when we happen to be flat on our faces. The rule of no smoking and no drinking, the virtual restriction of all leisure time to physical exercise and games, the pretence of indifference to the distractions of the near-by capital, are tiresome. I take a rather dim view of my milk-drinking existence, and that is putting it mildly. I earn no black marks in my military and athletic training and so my supervisional officer, Lt. Feldmann, is not dissatisfied. In some respects, however, I am not altogether successful in living down the reputation of being a “queer fish.”

The second term finds us in the neighboring town of Werder, a holiday resort in the Havel lake district. At last we are taught to fly. Competent instructors are at pains to initiate us into the mysteries of aviation. We practice circuits and landings with Fit. Sgt. Dieselhorst. After about the sixtieth time I am able to undertake a solo flight, and this achievement makes me an average pupil of my class. In conjunction with our flying lessons the technical and military curriculum is continued, as well as an advanced course for a commission. Our flying training finishes at the end of this second term and we receive our flight authority. The third term, back at Wildpark, is no longer so diversified. Little stress is laid on flying; instead air tactics, ground tactics, defense methods and other special subjects figure more largely in our work. Meanwhile I am seconded for a short spell and sent to Giebelstadt near Würzburg, the lovely old city on the Main, where I am attached to a combat unit as officer cadet. Gradually the date of our passing-out examination draws near, and speculation is rife as to what unit and what branch of the service we shall eventually be posted to. Almost to a man we would like to be fighter pilots, but this is clearly impossible. There is a rumor going about that our whole class is to be assigned to Bomber Command. Promotion to the rank of officer senior cadet and posting to a definite formation follows for those who pass the difficult examination.

Shortly before leaving the Military School we are sent on a visit to an anti-aircraft gunnery school on the Baltic coast. Quite unexpectedly Goering arrives and addresses us. At the end of his speech he asks for dive bomber volunteers. He tells us he still requires a number of young officers for the newly-formed Stuka formations. It does not take me long to make up my mind. “You would like to become a fighter,” I argue, “but you will have to be a bomber; so you might as well volunteer for the Stukas and be done with it.”

In any case I do not fancy myself flying the heavy bomber aircraft. A little quick thinking and my name is entered on the list of Stuka candidates. A few days later we all get our postings. Almost the whole of the class is assigned—to Fighter Command! I am bitterly disappointed, but there is nothing to be done about it.

I am a Stuka pilot. And so I watch my comrades happily depart.

In June 1938 I arrive at Graz, in the picturesque province of Steiermark, to report to a Stuka formation as officer senior cadet. It is three months since German troops marched into Austria, and the population is enthusiastic. The squadron which is stationed outside the town in the village of Thalerhof has recently received the type 87 Junkers; the single-seater Henschel will no longer be used as a dive-bomber. Learning to dive at all angles up to ninety degrees, formation flying, aerial gunnery and bombing are the fundamentals of the new arm. We are soon familiar with it. It cannot be said that I am a rapid learner; furthermore the rest of the squadron have already passed all their tests when I join it. It takes a long time to ring the bell, too long to please my squadron leader. I catch on so slowly that he ceases to believe that it will ever ring at all.

The fact that I spend my leisure hours in the mountains, or at sport, rather than in the officers’ mess, and that on the rare occasions when I put in an appearance there my only beverage is milk does not make my position any easier.

Meanwhile I have received my commission as pilot officer, and at Christmas 1938 the squadron is instructed to submit the name of an officer for special training in operational reconnaissance. Other squadrons all return a blank form; none of them is willing to release a man. It is, however, a splendid opportunity for the “1st” to be able at last to send the milk-drinker into the wilderness. Naturally I object; I want to stay with the Stukas. But my efforts to put a spoke in the wheels of the military machine are fruitless.

So in January 1939 I find myself on a course at the Reconnaissance Flying School at Hildesheim, and in the depths of despair. We are given instruction in the theory and practice of aerial photography, and it is whispered that at the end of the course we are to be posted to formations whose task it will be to fly special missions for operational air command. In reconnaissance aircraft the observer is also the skipper, and so we all become observers. Instead of piloting our aircraft we have now to sit still and trust ourselves to a pilot whom we naturally set down as a duffer, prophesying that he is certain to crash one day—with us. We learn aerial photography, taking vertical and oblique photographs, etc., here in the region of Hildesheim. The rest of the time is devoted to monotonous theory. At the end of the course we are assigned to our formations.

I am transferred to Distance Reconnaissance Squadron 2F 121 at Prenzlau.

Two months later we move to the Schneidemühl area. The war against Poland breaks out! I shall never forget my first flight across the frontier of another country. I sit tensely in my aircraft, waiting for what is now going to happen. We are awed by our first experience of flak and treat it with considerable respect. The rare appearance of a Polish fighter is always for a long time afterwards a topic of conversation. What has been hitherto the dry stuff of the classroom now becomes an exciting reality. We take photographs of the railway yards at Thorn, Kulm, etc., to ascertain troop movements and concentrations. Later our missions take us further East to the railway line Brest Litovsk—Kovel—Luck. The High Command wishes to know how the Poles are regrouping in the East and what the Russians are doing.

We use Breslau as our base for missions in the Southern zone.

The war days in Poland are soon over and I return to Prenzlau with the EK II. Here my flight commander guesses at once that my heart is not in reconnaissance flying. But he thinks that in the present state of high pressure activity there is little sense in my making an application for a retransfer to Stuka command; I do make one or two attempts without success. We spend the winter at Fritdar near Kassel in Hesse. From here our squadron carries out missions to the West and the North West, taking off from advanced bases further W. or N.W. as the case may be. We fly them at very high altitudes and therefore every crew has to undergo a special examination for high level reconnaissance. In Berlin the verdict is that I have failed to pass the test of altitude fitness. As the Stukas operate at a lower level, my squadron now endorses my application for transfer to Dive Bomber Command, and so I am hopeful of getting back to my “first love.” When, however, two crews are successively reported missing I am sent up again for re-examination. This time I am pronounced ‘exceptionally able to stand high altitudes’; apparently they were wrong the previous time. But although the Ministry issues no definite orders for my disposal I am transferred to Stammersdorf (Vienna), to an Aviation Training Regiment which later moves to Crailsheim. I am acting adjutant while the campaign in France begins. All my attempts to circumvent the proper channels by ringing up the personnel department of the Luftwaffe do not help me—the radio and the newspapers are my only contact with the war. Never have I been so downhearted as during this time. I feel as though I was being severely punished. Sport alone, to which I devote all my energies and every free minute, brings me some relief in my distress. During this period I have few opportunities to fly, and when I do it is only in little sporting aircraft. My main job is the military training of our recruits. On a weekend flight in the foulest weather in a Heinkel 70 with the C.O. as passenger I nearly crash in the Suabian Alps. But I am lucky and get back to Crailsheim safely.

My countless letters and telephone calls are at last successful. Presumably I am a nuisance which must be got rid of. Back I go to my old Graz Stuka formation, at the moment stationed at Caen on the English Channel. Operations here are practically over and a friend in the squadron who served with me at Graz gives me the benefit of his experiences in Poland and France in practice flights. I am certainly not lacking in keenness, for I have been longing for this moment for two years.

But one cannot catch up with everything in a couple of days and even now I am not a quick learner. I have not the practice. Here in the pleasure-seeking atmosphere of France my clean living, my addiction to sport and my everlasting habit of drinking milk are more conspicuous than ever. And so when the squadron is transferred to S.E. Europe I am sent to a Reserve Flight at Graz for further instruction. Will I ever learn my job?

The Balkan campaign begins—once again I am kept out of it. Graz is being temporarily used as a base for Stuka formations. It is hard to have to look on. The war surges forward across Yugoslavia into Greece, but I sit at home and practice formation flying, bombing and gunnery. I put rap with it for three weeks, and then one morning I suddenly say to myself: “Now at last you have rung the bell and you can make an aircraft do anything you like.” And that is the truth. My instructors are amazed. Dill and Joachim can pull any stunts they choose when leading our so-called circus, but my machine will always keep station right behind them as if attached by an invisible tow rope whether they go into a loop or dive or fly upside down. At bombing practice I hardly ever drop a bomb thirty feet wide of the target. In gunnery from the air I score over ninety out of a possible hundred. In a word, I have made the grade. Next time a call comes for replacements from the squadrons at the front I shall be one of them.

Soon after the Easter holidays, which I spend with colleagues skiing in the vicinity of Prebichi, the longed for moment arrives. An order comes through for aircraft to be flown to the Stuka squadron stationed in the South of Greece. With it comes the order for my transfer to this unit. Over Agram—Skoplje to Argos.

There I learn that I am to proceed further South. The 1 Stuka 2 is at Molai on the southernmost tip of the Peloponnesus. To a classical scholar the flight is especially impressive and revives many schoolroom memories. On arrival I lose no time in reporting to the station commander of my new unit. I am keenly excited, for at last the hour has come and I am about to take part in serious combat operation. The first person to greet me is the squadron adjutant; his face and mine cloud simultaneously. We are old acquaintances… he is my instructor from Caen.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. His tone takes all the wind out of my sails.

“I am reporting for duty.”

“There’ll be no operational flying for you till you’ve learnt how to manage a Stuka.” I can hardly contain my anger, but I keep my self-control even when he adds with a supercilious smile: “Have you learnt that much yet?”

An icy silence—until I break the intolerable pause:

“I am completely master of my aircraft.”

Almost contemptuously—or is it only my momentary impression?—he says with an emphasis that sends a shiver down my spine: “I will put your case before the C.O. and we’ll hope for the best. It’s for him to decide. That’s all; you can go and get yourself fixed up.”

As I come out of the tent into the blazing sunshine I blink my eyes—not only because of the glare. I am battling with a steadily growing feeling of desperation. Then common sense tells me there is no reason to give up hope: the adjutant may be prejudiced against me, but his opinion of me is one thing, the C.O.’s decision another. And even supposing the adjutant to have so much influence over the C.O.—could that be possible?

No, the C.O. is unlikely to be swayed because he does not even know me and will surely form an independent judgment. An order to report immediately to the C.O. puts an end to my brooding. I am confident that he will make up his mind for himself. I report. He returns my salute rather lackadaisically and submits me to a prolonged and silent scrutiny. Then he drawls: “We already know each other,” and, probably noticing an expression of contradiction on my face, waves aside my unuttered protest with a motion of his hand. “Of course we do, for my adjutant knows all about you. I know you so well that until further orders you are not to fly with my squadron. If at some future date we are under strength…”

I do not hear another word of what he says. For the first tune something comes over me, a feeling in the pit of my stomach: a feeling I never have again until years later when I am crawling home in an aircraft riddled by enemy bullets and serious loss of blood has sapped all my physical strength. This “something” is a dark intuition that despite everything the human factor is the criterion of war and the will of the individual the secret of victory.

How long the C.O. goes on talking I have not the least idea and as little of what he is saying. Rebellion seethes inside me and I feel the warning hammering in my head: “Don’t… don’t… don’t…” Then the adjutant’s voice recalls me to reality: “You are dismissed.”

I look at him now for the first time. I had not until that moment been aware that he was present. He returns me a stony stare. Now I have completely recovered control of my temper.

A few days later Operation Crete begins. The engines roar on the airfield; I sit in my tent. Crete is the trial of strength between the Stukas and the Navy. Crete is an island. According to all accepted military axioms only superior naval forces can wrest the island from the British. And England is a sea power; we are not. Certainly not where the Straits of Gibraltar prevent us from bringing up our naval units. The hitherto accepted military axioms, the English superiority at sea, are being wiped out by Stuka bombs. I sit in my tent “…that until further orders you are not to fly with my squadron!” A thousand times a day this sentence riles me, mocking, contemptuous, derisive. Outside I listen to the returning crews excitedly chatting of their experiences and of the effective landings of our airborne troops. Sometimes I try to persuade one of them to let me fly in his place. It is useless. Even friendly bribes avail me nothing. Occasionally I fancy I can read something like sympathy in the faces of my colleagues, and then my throat goes dry with bitter fury.

Whenever the aircraft take off on a sortie I feel like stuffing my fists into my ears so as not to hear the music of the engines. But I cannot. I have to listen. I cannot help myself! The Stukas go out on sortie after sortie. They are making history out there in the battle for Crete; I sit in my tent and weep with rage.

“We already know each other!” That is just what we do not. Not in the very least. I am positive that even now I should be a useful member of the squadron. I am completely master of my aircraft. I have the will to carry out an operation. A prejudice stands between me and the chance of winning my spurs. A prejudice on the part of my superiors who refuse to give me the opportunity to convince them of the wrongness of their “judgment.”

I mean to prove in spite of them that an injustice has been done me. I will not let their prejudice stop me getting at the enemy. This is no way to treat a subordinate; I realize that now. Time and again the flames of insubordination blaze inside me. Discipline! Discipline! Discipline! Control yourself, it is only by self-restraint that you can achieve anything. You must have an understanding for everything, even for the mistakes, the crass blunders of your superior officers. There is no other way to make yourself more fit than they to hold a command. And to have an understanding for the mistakes of your subordinates. Sit calmly in your tent and keep your temper. Your time will come when you will really count for something. Never lose confidence in yourself!