Chapter 9
The brief lull on the Eastern Front came to a sudden and dramatic end on 5 July 1943 when the Germans launched Operation Zitadelle, the Battle of Kursk, which would develop into the largest battle of armoured units in history. The Germans hoped to eliminate Soviet troop concentrations in the Kursk salient by a pincer attack, supported by Luftflotte 6 (previously Luftwaffe Command East) from the north and Luftflotte 4 from the south, but the huge German buildup prior to launching the offensive had simply indicated to the Russians that an attack was imminent and so vast Soviet reinforcements had been brought in.
The Jagdwaffe in the east had around 550 single-engine fighters stretched along the entire Eastern Front. While this figure is almost identical to the number of fighters available the year before when Hitler had launched Braunschweig, the composition of the Jagdwaffe was now quite different. The introduction of the FW 190 had seen the balance change from an all-109 fighter force just a year before to a mixed force of approximately 60 per cent FW 190As and 40 per cent Bf 109Gs.
The FW 190s were mainly allocated to Luftflotte 6, although a number had gone north to the Leningrad area to operate with the Bf 109s of JG 54 under Luftflotte 1. The four Gruppen of 190s operating with Luftflotte 6 (three of JG 51 and one of JG 54), some 160 fighters in all, were under the command of Oberstleutnant Karl-Gottfried Nordmann and were to provide fighter cover along the northern flank of Kursk. A hundred more FW 190s were to operate with Luftflotte 4 on the southern flank of Kursk in the ground-attack role. The Bf 109s were mainly allocated to Luftflotte 4 (although Luftflotte 5 had retained its Bf 109E/Fs of JG 5 in Finland) to operate in the southern sector and these consisted of three Gruppen of JG 52, under the command of Oberst leutnant Dietrich Hrabak, and two of JG 3 commanded by Major Kurt Brändle and Major Walther Dahl.
For the Luftwaffe, Zitadelle was over almost before it had even begun. During the early hours of 5 July, just as the bombers and dive bombers were being prepared for the opening offensive, large numbers of Russian aircraft attacked their airfields. It was only the alertness of JG 3 and JG 52 that saved a disaster and their quick reaction in scrambling to intercept the raids led to a fierce air battle between the force of nearly 150 Bf 109Gs and the Russian hordes, resulting in more than 400 Soviet aircraft claimed for the loss of fewer than thirty German fighters. The most successful during this opening encounter was 23-year-old Oberleutnant Joachim Kirschner, Kapitän of 5./JG 3. His nine victories that day took his personal total past the 150 mark for which he was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross.
Throughout the opening morning of Zitadelle, the Jagdwaffe provided escort for the bombers and Ju 87 Stukas and it was not until the afternoon that more encounters with the Red Air Force took place. Two Staffelkapitäne serving with JG 52 scored double figures on the opening day of Zitadelle. One was Johannes Wiese of 2./JG 52, who claimed twelve Russian aircraft, and the other was Walter Krupinski of 7./JG 52 who was credited with eleven.
But arguably the best performance of the opening day came from a relatively unheard-of FW 190 pilot, Oberfeldwebel Hubert Strassl, a young Austrian serving with 8./JG 51. Strassl claimed fifteen victories in four sorties during the afternoon and early evening to the south of Orel and would add a further ten victories the following day, followed by two more the day after. But then, with his score on sixty-seven, Strassl was killed on 8 July, when he was shot down by LaGG-3s to the south of Ponyri. Strassl had been forced desperately low during the encounter and although he was seen to bail out of his aircraft there was no time for his parachute to deploy fully.
The Jagdwaffe soon gained local air superiority and maintained a level of dominance during the opening days of the new offensive. JG 52 passed the 6,000 mark for its total number of victories during early July, followed soon after by JG 51. These were quite staggering achievements and would become even more so during the following year when JG 51 surpassed 8,000 victories, as did JG 54, with JG 52 boasting an even higher tally when it passed 10,000 victories.
There were, nonetheless, losses and one to be shot down on the second day of Zitadelle was Major Reinhard Seiler, Kommandeur of I./JG 54. With his personal score on ninety-nine, Seiler was seeking his 100th victory but having chased and claimed an Airacobra he was then shot down by another. Seiler had achieved his century of victories, for which he would later be awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross, and was fortunate to escape with his life, although he was badly wounded and would take no further part in air operations for the rest of the war. But not all were fortunate enough to escape with their life, including Major Rudolf Resch, Kommandeur of IV./JG 51, who was killed on 11 July. Resch, a holder of the Knight’s Cross credited with ninety-four victories, was shot down by Soviet fighters to the south of Ponyri.
Despite the efforts of the Luftwaffe over the Kursk salient during July 1943, Zitadelle was struggling and by the end of the first week it was evident that it had failed. The Allied invasion of Sicily on 10 July resulted in Hitler abandoning Zitadelle on 16 July as he ordered the transfer of key assets to Italy. This decision to call off a major operation at the height of a tactical battle would, understandably, later lead to severe criticism of Hitler but the Allied landings and the immediate threat to southern Italy had now become a greater priority.
The last day of Zitadelle witnessed the death of one young pilot, 21-year-old Leutnant Günther Scheel of 3./JG 54, who had the impressive record of shooting down more enemy aircraft than he had flown operational missions. Scheel had only joined his unit earlier in the year on completion of his pilot training and had quickly adapted to air combat on the Eastern Front. His unit was transferred from the northern section of the front to Orel in early July to support the Kursk offensive and he quickly made a name for himself, shooting down more than forty Russian aircraft in a little over two weeks. But with such intense air activity his luck ran out on 16 July when, at low level, the wing of his FW 190A clipped the Yak-9 that he had just shot down. Scheel stood no chance. In an operational career lasting just six months he had claimed seventy-one aircraft in seventy sorties for which he was posthumously awarded the Knight’s Cross.
The intensity of the air activity over the Eastern Front had reached new heights and the end of Zitadelle did not bring an end to the losses. In its immediate aftermath a number of the Jagdwaffe’s influential combat leaders were killed in action and these included Heinrich Jung, Kommandeur of II./JG 54, who was shot down to the south-east of Leningrad on 30 July with his score on sixty-eight victories. A few days later, on 2 August, Gerhard Homuth, who had replaced Reinhard Seiler as Kommandeur of I./JG 54, failed to return from a sortie near Orel. Homuth, with sixty-three victories, had been one of the leading scorers of the North African campaign and had only just arrived on the Eastern Front. Replacing Homuth as Kommandeur of I./JG 54 was Hans Götz, with eighty-two victories and a holder of the Knight’s Cross, but just two days later, on 4 August, Götz was also killed. Three days later, Heinrich Höfemeier, Kapitän of 3./JG 51 and holder of the Knight’s Cross with ninety-six victories over the Eastern Front, was killed over Karachev. And so it went on.
The Soviet Air Force had come a long way in two years of fighting and it had become increasingly hard for the Jagdwaffe to score success. The Soviet aviation industry was producing better fighters by keeping the design simple and based on earlier production aircraft so that vast numbers could be produced in quick time. One example was the Lavochkin La-5, a development of the LaGG-3 that had been designed to accommodate a more powerful radial engine, giving the La-5 a top speed in excess of 400 mph. The latest variant, the La-5FN, entered service in 1943 and would be further developed as the much improved La-7, arguably the Soviet’s best fighter of the war, which would enter service during the following year and designed to counter the FW 190A-8. Another example was the Yak-9, a further development of the Yak-7, which itself had been developed from the Yak-1, that had entered the combat arena at Stalingrad during the last weeks of 1942 and would become the most- produced Soviet fighter of all time. The Yak-9 performed exceedingly well at lower altitudes but was similar in appearance to the Yak-3 that performed well at higher altitudes, and this gave the Jagdflieger the problem of having first to identify what variant of Yak he was up against and then decide how best to counter it.
The Russian pilots were now operating as pairs or in formations of four, constantly weaving and maintaining their speed, thus improving their own chances of surprising an opponent, while being less vulnerable to unobserved attacks. The two air forces were now more evenly matched in quality but, despite being heavily outnumbered, the Jagdgeschwader had inflicted heavy losses on their opposition and at least maintained parity in the air over the crucial sectors.
Stalin then unleashed the might of his armies in a series of decisive blows along the Kursk sector. To the north there were offensives against cities such as Smolensk and Orel, while to the south there were similar thrusts towards the city of Kharkov, the second-largest city in the Ukraine. This time the offensives would prove decisive and from now on there would be no stopping the Red Army. The Wehrmacht was forced to withdraw and this retreat set the pattern for the rest of 1943 as the air war on the Eastern Front raged on.
German strength in the east was now in decline as aircraft and spares had to be abandoned and more units were recalled to Germany to defend the Reich, and this all came at a time when the Soviet Air Force was increasing in strength. As Focke-Wulf’s production line struggled to meet the increasing demand for new fighters, some units reverted back to the Bf 109 as those left to resist the might of Stalin’s forces in the east did so in the knowledge they had effectively been forgotten by their High Command back home.
Despite facing increasing challenges, the Jagdwaffe continued to resist the relentless might of the Red Air Force and one young pilot rapidly making his name known on the Eastern Front was Leutnant Erich Hartmann of JG 52. Known as ‘Bubi’ (young boy) because of his youthful looks and age, twenty-year-old Hartmann had been posted to the Eastern Front in October 1942. Based at Maykop and flying the Bf 109G, he quickly learned from some of the Luftwaffe’s finest but it still took time for him to establish himself in combat. By March 1943 he had claimed his first two victories but it was while he was flying as wingman to the experienced Walter Krupinski, Kapitän of 7./JG 52, that Hartmann learned the art of close-quarter attacks and how to get closer and closer to his victim. The teaching worked well. Hartmann would soon add to his total and during the next five months took his personal tally to ninety victories, more than forty of which were achieved during one month.
Hartmann had a lucky escape on 19 August 1943 when he was in combat with Sturmoviks and his aircraft was damaged. Forced to land behind enemy lines he was taken prisoner but quick to try and find a way out, Hartmann faked internal injury. He was placed on a stretcher and put in a truck where he waited for an opportunity to make his escape. Then, under the cover of a Stuka attack, Hartmann jumped from the truck and made a break into a field. Evading his pursuers, Hartmann hid and waited for night fall before continuing his escape back towards German lines under the cover of darkness by following a Soviet patrol heading for the front. Even then, just as he was making his way back to German lines, Hartmann had to survive a shot from an overly eager German sentry, which passed through his trousers.
Allowing Hartmann to escape would prove extremely costly for the Soviets as he would continue to be a thorn in their side. At the end of the month Hartmann was appointed Staffelkapitän of 9./JG 52 at the age of just twenty-one when he replaced the centurion Leutnant Berthold Korts who went missing on 29 August having been last seen engaging P-39 Airacobras.
Even at such a young age, Hartmann proved to be an inspirational leader. He would always make sure, as best he could, that his pilots remained as safe as possible and took enormous pride in the fact that he never lost a wingman in combat. His technique was often based on first seeking out his enemy and then ambushing them, using the power and performance of the Bf 109G to his advantage. Although he was extremely capable when it came to close air combat, he was not one to be drawn into lengthy manoeuvres but chose instead to use his speed and height to set up an attack and, where possible, to use the sun to his advantage so that he could sweep through a formation and then capitalise on the confusion he had just caused, either to disengage or to attack another victim. If conditions and the altitude of an enemy formation dictated otherwise, then he would often attack from below so that he could silhouette the enemy aircraft against the white cloudy sky.
Tactically, Hartmann learned how to be patient and he became a master at deciding whether to attack at once or to hold off and wait for a better opportunity to develop. Against the Sturmoviks, the Soviet’s main ground-attack aircraft, which usually flew in formations that were more akin to those of heavier bombers, Hartmann often found his enemies did not even take evasive action. This would enable him to close to a ridiculously short range, sometimes to within forty or fifty yards, before opening fire. This was a technique he had learned from Krupinski and made a kill almost a certainty. Closing to point-blank range made it all but impossible for his victim to escape and enabled Hartmann to be as accurate as possible and to expend the minimum amount of ammunition in one engagement. There was always the risk that Hartmann’s aircraft would suffer damage from the debris from his opponent, and that often proved to be the case, but the technique worked well; many Soviet airmen became victims without ever seeing him.
Defensively, Hartmann had perfected the use of speed and rudder to point his aircraft into an unexpected direction so that he could deceive an opponent into misjudging the amount of deflection required when opening fire. Should his opponent open fire then Hartmann would use full control stick deflection to put his Messerschmitt into an outside loop to make his escape.
Hartmann reached a century of victories in September 1943 and, by the end of the following month, when he was awarded a long overdue Knight’s Cross his total stood at 148; it was the highest number of victories required by anyone on the Eastern Front before the Knight’s Cross was awarded. By now his call-sign of Karaya One (Karaya meaning sweetheart) was feared by the Soviet pilots who came into contact with him. There was even a price put on his head by the Soviet command.
The award of Hartmann’s Knight’s Cross coincided with another milestone being passed by a fellow member of JG 52 when Günther Rall, Kommandeur of III./JG 52, passed his double century of victories, which earned him the Swords. Also proving to be a thorn in the Soviet’s side was Walter Nowotny, now Kommandeur of I./JG 54. Nowotny had converted to the FW 190 earlier in the year and had adapted to the new type better than most. His personal score had risen at a rapid rate to pass a century of victories, and he was now leader of a feared Schwarm that included his loyal wingman, Karl Schnörrer, Anton Döbele and Rudolf Rademacher, and known as the Nowotny Schwarm or sometimes as the ‘Chain of Devils’. During August 1943 alone Nowotny claimed a staggering forty-nine victories, and during the following month he took his total past the 200 mark. At that time Nowotny was the highest-scoring Experte in the Luftwaffe; he was awarded the Oak Leaves and Swords to his Knight’s Cross. He was then promoted to Hauptmann and, on 14 October 1943, became the first pilot to reach 250 victories to earn him the coveted Diamonds at the age of just twenty-two. The decoration was presented to him personally by Hitler at the Wolfsschanze at Rastenburg.
It was not long before Günther Rall became the second to pass 250 victories. Many consider Rall to have been the best marksman of all those serving on the Eastern Front when it came to air-to-air gunnery due to many of his victories being achieved from extreme ranges or high crossing angles, although, like others, he was just as comfortable when attacking from very close in. Rall was undoubtedly a master of deflection shooting, a technique that many found difficult, which required aiming ahead of the target so that the target arrived at exactly the same point in the sky as the rounds fired by Rall.
Another young pilot to enjoy success in the east was Gerhard Barkhorn. Barkhorn was still only twenty-four but he was already a veteran of the campaigns against France and Britain, although it took him more than a hundred combat missions to achieve his first aerial success. Two years on, he was now an Oberleutnant and Staffelkapitän of 4./JG 52, and holder of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves having taken his personal score past a hundred victories.
Using the art of surprise, Barkhorn found that he was often able to get into a Russian formation unobserved, particularly when attacking from high and line astern, or from low and beneath the formation from the rear, tactics that he had clearly mastered. He often found the lookout of the Russian pilots to be poor and their tactics lacking in flexibility but air combat was far from easy, and against a good opponent Barkhorn was known to temper aggression with caution.
Barkhorn was given command of II./JG 52 in September 1943 but his appointment coincided with the loss of Heinz Schmidt who was posted as missing in action on 5 September after being shot down near Markor. Schmidt’s death had come just two weeks after the loss of Max Stotz and these losses were a blow to the Jagdwaffe in the east.
There were, however, further successes for Hartmann, who now passed 150 victories, and for Barkhorn who took his tally to 200 during November. These two Experten would become the best of friends and both would go on to score at a very high rate; Barkhorn’s 250th victory came on 13 February 1944 and just a few weeks later, on 2 March, Hartmann would pass 200. Along with Walter Krupinski and Johannes Wiese, also of JG 52, Barkhorn and Hartmann were summoned to the Berghof in Berchtesgaden where Hitler personally presented Barkhorn with the Swords and Hartmann with the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross; Krupinski and Wiese also received the Oak Leaves.
While JG 52 boasted the highest-scoring Jagdflieger, JG 51 had its achievers too. Major Erich Leie, Kommandeur of I./JG 51 since January 1943, claimed his century of victories in November 1943, an achievement matched by the Kapitän of 1./JG 51, Oberleutnant Joachim Brendel. Two other Staffelkapitäne amassed a century of victories in the aftermath of Kursk: Oberleutnant Karl-Heinz Weber of 7./JG 51 and Ober leutnant Günther Schack of 9./JG 51.
Although many stories of great success continued, the fact was the number of Experten was slowly reducing. Just two years earlier during the opening phase of Barbarossa, many had performed well and had achieved numerous victories. They had been well trained and were prepared for air combat. Their prospects of survival, albeit against moderate opposition at the time, were generally good but much had now changed. The Red Air Force could no longer be considered to be moderate opposition and new pilots arriving on the Jagdgruppen along the Eastern Front had not received the same level of training or the preparation enjoyed by their predecessors. After Zitadelle, 25 per cent of new pilots did not survive more than their first four operational sorties. The Jagdwaffe had to rely on the skill and courage of its Experten but in a war of attrition they were gradually disappearing one by one.
The Luftwaffe continued to defy the advancing Soviet forces and one to stand out above others was Oberfeldwebel Otto Kittel serving with 2./JG 54 who was awarded the Knight’s Cross at the end of October 1943 for achieving 120 victories. Kittel’s award demonstrates just how many victories were now required for an NCO pilot to get recognition. Kittel had scored his first victory during Barbarossa and initially found aerial success hard to come by but during Zitadelle his score started to mount. He quickly took his total past fifty and then averaged a kill a day, passing a century of victories in mid-September.
Another of JG 54’s excellent tacticians was Leutnant Emil Lang who enjoyed great success on 3 November when he claimed a record eighteen aircraft in one day, making him the most successful fighter pilot in one day of aerial combat in the history of air warfare. Lang was previously a civil pilot with the German airline Lufthansa and so had served as a transport pilot during the early period of the war. Eventually transferred for training as a fighter pilot in 1942, Lang was nearly thirty-four years old by the time he arrived on the Eastern Front in January 1943. He initially served with 1./JG 54, scoring his first success in March, before he was appointed Staffelkapitän of 5./JG 54 in August, after which his personal score mounted quickly. During October and November Lang claimed seventy-two victories in just three weeks of aerial fighting around the Kiev area, and was awarded the Knight’s Cross having taken his total to 119.
Lang’s achievement on 3 November was almost repeated just three days later when Hauptmann Erich Rudorffer, Kommandeur of II./JG 54, claimed thirteen aircraft in one day; all were reportedly shot down in one sortie during a period of just seventeen minutes. But Rudorffer did not always have things his own way. He was shot down sixteen times and on nine occasions owed his life to his parachute.
While the third winter on the Eastern Front did not prove as harsh as the previous two, endless amounts of mud made operating from some of the more basic airfields extremely hazardous and individual achievements in the air were seemingly having little impact on the ground. While Stalin’s major offensives following Kursk had been focused on the central and southern sectors of the Eastern Front, the situation in the northern sector had been one of relative stability as the siege of Leningrad continued. Then, in January 1944, the northern sector burst into life when Stalin launched a new offensive that resulted in the ending of the siege, 872 days after it had begun, making the siege of Leningrad amongst the longest and most destructive in history.
It was impossible to prevent the Red advance in the north, just as it was further south, and the overall situation was not helped because many fighter units had already been transferred back to Germany for the defence of the Reich. While things may have already seemed bad in the east, things were about to get worse as more fighters were sent west to counter the Allied invasion of mainland Europe, leaving the Luftwaffe with fewer than 400 single-engine fighters along its entire Eastern Front while the Soviets boasted more than 13,000 aircraft, of which nearly half were fighters. The Red Air Force now outnumbered the Jagdwaffe in the east by more than 15 : 1. The tide had well and truly turned.