9
The aircraft of the Bindersleben 262 Kommando touched down at Achmer almost at the same time as Nowotny’s flight. Günther Wegmann handed over his unit and was appointed Nowotny’s adjutant immediately. The new, larger Kommando was now reorganised into 8th Squadron at Hesepe under Leutnant Schall and 9th Squadron under Oberleutnant Bley at Achmer. A mountain of work awaited everybody. Nowotny confirmed his reputation as an energetic organiser. All day and every day he occupied his time telephoning or visiting the local Gauleiter, the offices of General Galland, the Reich Air Ministry, the Messerschmitt people and equipment suppliers with a view to getting the unit operational as early as possible. His major demands were for more ground personnel, more aircraft, more modern equipment, more pilots. There was not a moment’s peace until the radar direction unit was set up in a small guesthouse between the two airfields and Viktor Preusker was installed there as master of ceremonies. It was recognised that it was likely that enemy intelligence knew about Nowotny’s Kommando from the outset. Its location lay below the path of the main bomber approach routes to Berlin and other cities and the low-flying Mustangs which controlled the local air space soon made their presence felt. The German unit received a bitter foretaste of just how dangerous this spot would be on its first day of operations.
On the afternoon of 7 October 1944 warning was given of large bomber formations approaching. Four Me 262s were sent up to intercept. Two were shot down by Mustangs while climbing away from the runway. The third and fourth got among the bombers, destroying three, possibly four. On their return both jets were low on fuel. One landed safely, the other was shot by Mustangs while landing. Despite a great hail of flak and the presence of German conventional fighters guarding the airfield approaches three Me 262s had been lost. Taking off and landing, the jets were at their most vulnerable to the ever-watchful Mustangs; it was not the first time it had happened in the history of the Me 262 but for Nowotny it was a savage blow. The problem was primarily having the airfield in the path of the enemy bomber streams; the Mustang advance guard waited for the jets to rise and simply gobbled them up.
The next operation came two days later. The Kommando got off more lightly but the circumstances were disquieting. After a successful mission Leutnant Schall was pursued home by a swarm of Mustangs and shot down. He baled out and was then ruthlessly machine-gunned by the American fighters while dangling from his parachute. This was against the rules of warfare.6
Schall was extraordinarily lucky and landed unharmed. Upon receiving his report, Nowotny was beside himself with rage: his personal code was one of strict compliance with the rules of warfare and he had never understood the need to continue a dogfight once the opposing pilot had been deprived of his machine. So overcome was he that when a Mustang pilot was brought in after parachuting from his aircraft two days later, Nowotny ordered his adjutant Wegmann to have the American taken out and shot. By now Wegmann understood Nowotny’s passionate temperament and decided that the order was rhetorical. The same day the American was safely behind the barbed wire of a PoW camp. During a relaxed talk in the officers’ mess on the evening of 5 November 1944 Nowotny thanked his adjutant for disobeying the order. Wegmann and Oberleutnant Schnörrer then discussed with the commander the disadvantages of having the joint airfields directly below the bomber path. Next the question was explored of improving the Me 262. Here the most urgent modifications were a lengthened control stick for more leverage to bring the aircraft out of a steep dive and better armament.
On account of his many belly-landings and parachute escapes twenty-five-year-old Karl Schnörrer was nicknamed ‘Quax’ after the Ruhmann cartoon character of the time ‘Quax the Crash Landing Pilot’. He had flown 500 missions, about half as Nowotny’s wingman, and the men were good friends. Quax and Wegmann had therefore both been ‘baptised in the waters of all fronts’ as the saying went. The stormy Nowotny set great store by Schnörrer’s judgment. After the war, the latter admitted that he was personally not comfortable with the Me 262, knowing it not to have been thoroughly tested and lacking essential equipment early on.
Once the various technical subjects had been talked over to exhaustion, Nowotny’s companions toasted his first Me 262 victory the previous day, the 257th kill of his career. After the glasses had been emptied, Nowotny’s mood became morose. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said at length, ‘but I keep having this dream about my next victory. Suddenly there’s one right behind me. You know the bomber I shot down yesterday? I had seen that happen in a dream beforehand too. Last night I didn’t dream at all.’ After a lengthy pause he added, more to himself than his two listeners, ‘Perhaps the next will be the last.’ It sounded so odd to hear Nowotny speak in this manner that both Wegmann and Schnörrer had to force a laugh.
‘Now, now, Nowi, don’t talk such utter rot,’ Schnörrer chided him, ‘You, of all people! If ever I spoke like that I’d have to have a pretty good reason for doing so, not a dream.’ He took the decanter and filled the empty glasses. ‘Now, let’s drink to the next half dozen!’
Nowotny was expecting the visit of the Inspector of Day-fighters, Oberst Hannes Trautloft, next day. Trautloft’s job was to monitor the standards of upkeep of the day-fighter units, of which the Me 262 now formed part. A successful fighter pilot since the beginning of the campaign in Spain in 1936, he had been one of the first Me 109 pilots and was thus an old hand who knew how to get things done better than anybody. He heard out Nowotny’s concerns sympathetically and then summoned a conference to listen to the requests of the Kommando’s pilots. Heading the list was the need for constant Fw 190 and Me 109 fighter protection above Hesepe and Achmer. Trautloft had been commodore of Nowotny’s training squadron and that evening they sat in pleasant reminiscences of better times. It was their last reunion.
During the early afternoon of the next day, 7 November 1944, General Galland and Generaloberst Alfred Keller arrived by air at short notice. Keller, a commander of very long experience, had had charge of IV Fliegerkorps over Holland and Belgium in May 1940. As General der Flieger he had attempted to dissuade Hitler from invading the Soviet Union. Afterwards he commanded Air Fleet 1 against Leningrad. At the time of his visit to Achmer he was responsible for producing the new generation of German military aviators and had had the opportunity to witness at first hand the Me 262 training problems by accompanying Galland. A direct man and a patriot, he was an admirer of Hitler and at the same time one of his sharpest critics.
After a thorough inspection of the two aerodromes and installations, the two generals settled down to a discussion with Nowotny and some of the more veteran pilots, including Wegmann, Schall, Preusker and Schnörrer, on flying the Me 262 operationally. Particular interest was shown in the dangers at take-off and landing. Keller wanted to know about dedication and fighting spirit, especially among the younger pilots. Nowotny invited Schnörrer to open the debate.
Quax, who had lost many friends in aerial battles, described the difference between a calculated attack and one made in blind passion. He knew the capabilities of the various fighters and their little idiosyncrasies and advanced the view that the maturity of an aircraft for battle was a precondition for success. Hitler had used exactly the same terms to Johannes Steinhoff as his justification for denying the jet to the fighter arm. Admitting it might be an eccentricity of his, Schnörrer observed nevertheless that in his opinion trust in the machine was essential for the fighting spirit of the pilot. After that he listed the known deficiencies of the Me 262 which remained uncorrected and which – as he knew – could not be remedied overnight.
All the pilots gathered in the group conceded privately that what Schnörrer had expressed was correct, but it was naturally also a question of personal mentality. Schnörrer’s considerations about the maturity of an aircraft were utterly incomprehensible to fighter pilots who trusted to luck. To them, the important factor was that the ‘power-house’ should be fast and well-armed, and the rest could look after itself. Among fighter pilots there were all levels of mental approach to these matters.
One pilot would fly by the seat of his pants while another could not rest easy until he had triangulated his course on a chart allowing for all known vagaries of the wind between points A and B. Keller took a middle course, whatever that was, and considered Schnörrer too cautious. Thus his reaction was sceptical. History, he concluded, gave enough examples where fighting spirit and courage had been more decisive than the keenness of the sword. But Keller was unaware of the extent of Quax’s experience. Schnörrer saw that he had said too much and fell silent. The conversation dried up for a spell and then re-opened along another avenue. Whether the tragic events of the following day were attributable to this conversation is an open question.
On the early morning of 8 November 1944 – Galland states 8 October in his book, but this is definitely an error – Galland, Keller, Nowotny and other officers of the Kommando Nowotny met at the Bramsche control centre for a short conference. The sun had still not risen when the radar post reported large concentrations of enemy bombers crossing the Zuider Zee. Another formation was over the Channel.
There are several versions of subsequent events. When enemy fighters were reported preceding the bombers, four Me 262s were ordered to intercept – Wegmann and Feldwebel Baudach from Achmer and Schall’s two machines from Hesepe. While conventional Fw 190 fighters circled the two airfields, the latter aircraft got away first, as Wegmann’s machines were still in the repair hangar and had to be towed out, thus delaying the procedure slightly. The battle began with the harsh staccato of flak from batteries distributed around both German airfields.
Initially all seemed to go well. Leutnant Schall was first to report in: ‘Indians [slang for ‘enemy’] in sight, I am attacking,’ he said laconically. On the ground the observers all wore headphones through which the aerial fight could be followed. Leutnant Schall:
‘We’ve knocked down one.’ A few minutes later came Wegmann’s report: ‘We are in contact with the enemy,’ and then briefly: ‘I have shot down a Mustang.’ Transmission ceased for a while. The silence was interrupted by more shooting. Leutnant Schall: ‘My wingman has been shot down. I saw the aircraft crash in flames.’ Outside the small hotel on the Bramsche road housing Preusker’s radar centre the group searched the sky. Cloud cover was only five-tenths but nothing could be seen. Schall: ‘My machine is on fire, I’m baling out.’ Two enemy planes shot down for the price of two Me 262s!
Karl Schnörrer cast his eyes over the group which had Nowotny, Galland and Keller at its centre. Nowotny’s face showed anger and bitter disappointment. Suddenly he turned to his driver standing beside Schnörrer and said, ‘Come on, Gadecke, drive me to Achmer. You too, Quax, I’m going up.’ Seconds later he was in the passenger seat of his BMW and ignored General Galland’s command, ‘Stay here, Nowotny!’
Schnörrer slipped into the back seat. He would have liked nothing better than to fly as Nowotny’s wingman as he had done on more than 250 occasions on the Russian front but his knees were still in plaster from his last crash and for that reason he had not been trained for the Me 262.
At Achmer airfield Wegmann had landed. He could have flown alongside Nowotny but his aircraft had been shot at and went directly into the workshops. A pilot at Hesepe field – this must have been Schall – received orders to rendezvous with Nowotny in the air. Therefore the commander took off alone.
As Gadecke and Schnörrer arrived back at the control centre another bomber mass and its fighter escort was passing overhead. The bombers were occasionally visible through broken cloud, each four-engined bomber a black speck trailing a long silver stream. The earlier formation had already bombed and was heading for home.
The radio crackled and they heard Nowotny’s calm voice. ‘I am attacking.’ There followed some bursts of fire and dull thumps, followed by a long period when he was concentrating on the job in hand and made no contact. Suddenly his voice was heard, rapid and alarmed. ‘Shit, shit, my turbine.’
Schnörrer stared at the sky as if he could help him. ‘Jump, Walter,’ he whispered repeatedly. He knew from Russia that his commander preferred to attempt the most dangerous landings with the undercarriage retracted rather than use his parachute. Perhaps Nowotny was worried about the Mustangs over the airfield – the incident involving Schall was still fresh in his mind. Actually there was no need to shoot at the pilot hanging from his parachute straps – the dirty deed could be done by flying just above the canopy and then climbing quickly: the silk would deflate in the propeller slipstream.
Nowotny made a last transmission: ‘I have just shot down my third... left engine is out... I am being attacked... I have been hit...’ The rest of what he said was garbled. On the ground the onlookers’ anxious wait came to an end as suddenly the whistling noise typical of an Me 262 became audible and a jet shot out from the clouds, approaching and clearly shedding height. Just at that moment the sun broke through and glinted on a group of Mustang fighters falling towards the German aircraft in an almost vertical dive. There were several bursts of fire. Nobody gave the jet a chance. It was barely a few hundred metres up and would be an easy kill when it came in to land.
The Me 262 curved into an ever steeper incline and disappeared from sight. A few seconds later in the distance there was a dull thud. No fire, no mushroom cloud of smoke. All over. Nobody could accept it. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t Nowotny, perhaps it was Schall?’ a voice suggested. Schnörrer moved up to the General der Jagdflieger. ‘That was Nowotny, Herr General.’
‘No!’ Galland shouted. As the General jerked round, Quax saw that his face was graven in stone. Perhaps he was hoping against hope that it was somebody else. But even Galland couldn’t make crashes unhappen.
‘I am sorry General, but yes, it was him,’ Schnörrer replied. In tears he turned away abruptly and joined Hauptmann Werner Wenzel in Nowotny’s car. They drove off immediately for the crash site, the others following in their official vehicles. The small convoy stopped once or twice to check that they were heading in the right direction and eventually found the location on the edge of a wood near the small village of Epe close to Bramsche. The local fire brigade and an ambulance had got there very quickly but found a scene of utter devastation. There had been no explosion or fire, just an eerie stillness around the deep crater from which jutted bizarre scraps of the aircraft. Walter Nowotny was gone without a trace.
For Karl Schnörrer, Günther Wegmann and other pilots of the Kommando the self-questioning began. Why had Nowotny taken off against Galland’s order? To what extent had his dreams and the assertions of General Keller affected his judgement? Schall seems to have been the pilot ordered to fly as Nowotny’s wingman – had he made the rendezvous in the air? It seems doubtful. Therefore had Nowotny attacked alone? Was he trying to land the jet on one engine? Did the controls fail or was the Mustang attack the fatal event? Nowotny was still alive in the last phase of the dive and had probably tried to bale out at the last moment, for his half-opened and torn parachute pack was found near the crater. But what actually happened really remains something of a mystery.
Kommando Nowotny did not survive the death of its commander long. It existed from 1 October to 12 November 1944. Of the thirty aircraft supplied to the unit during that period, four were still airworthy on the last day. Twenty-six had been lost through enemy action or accident. The Kommando achieved between twenty-two and twenty-six victories. Thus the ratio of victories and losses was 1:1, an unsatisfactory situation in view of the superior speed of the jet. The delay before the Me 262 fighter was at last thrust into the front line lasted many months. This led – for reasons which are easily understandable – to a hasty, ill-considered and improvised state of operational readiness. In effect, the premiere was staged before the rehearsal and this moreover after a far too short period of normal working-up. In view of the war situation, time could not be spared either for a thorough training or to gain experience with the machine. ‘The bird eats or dies’ was now the byword, and there was precious little choice. That applied not only to the Me 262 units but also the Me 163s, the Wilde Sau night-fighters or the ramming Kommandos. Everything was in short supply: experienced pilots, instructors, fuel, safe transport. One thing which did still function was propaganda. Many clung to it, fearing the truth. The war had long passed the point where it might have still been possible to throw in the towel to avoid the final cruel act. Unconditional surrender was the only term on offer: total war demanded total defeat.
The figures are sobering. Between 1940 and 1945 nearly two million tons of bombs were dropped on Germany and the occupied territories. The Luftwaffe dropped 74,000 tons of bombs on England, about 3.7% of that amount. The number of dead after the raid on Hamburg alone was estimated at 60,000, equal to the total killed by bombing in all Great Britain throughout the war. The RAF dropped 700,000 tons of bombs on Germany and its aircraft flew 400,000 missions. Between 1939 and 1945, the Reich lost 72,000 military aircraft of all kinds.
The missions flown by Kommando Nowotny exhausted its strength within six short weeks. The grounds were only too obvious: the numerical superiority of the enemy fighter force made the siting of airfields close to the front, such as Achmer and Hesepe, imprudent. For enemy fighters it was no more than a cat’s leap to keep close watch on these airfields every day and no greater risk than normal to attack jet aircraft taking off and landing there.
The majority of German fighter pilots were not yet ‘at home’ with the control stick as they were with the Me 109, Me 110 or Fw 190 and, since there was no basic combat training, not a few had their first taste of action after having flown the jet on only two or three occasions.
The Me 262 was not difficult to fly. This was an advantage on a peaceful training circuit but could create overconfidence. Kommando Thierfelder served primarily for pre-operational working up. Errors were generally forgiven by the aircraft. Kommando Nowotny was exclusively for operations. Under combat conditions it was suddenly very different. A careless turn, a high-speed pursuit after an enemy in a dive, a too-hasty shove at the throttle lever, forgetting absent-mindedly how long one had spent in the air: all these could have nasty or perhaps fatal consequences.
General Galland’s order for a transfer back to Lechfeld for a battle pause, retraining and refitting came a few days after Nowotny’s death. After looking over Achmer and Hesepe, Fritz Wendel reported:
Kommando Nowotny was ordered back to Lechfeld for pilots and ground crew to retrain following the four losses of 8 November. This was on General Galland’s order. I had already spoken personally on the weaknesses and faults of this Kommando at its formation. The pilots were only partially trained for fighter missions and thrown into action after only two training flights with the Me 262. Nothing had improved up to the time of Major Nowotny’s death, which is now succeeded by General Galland ordering a period of further working up at Lechfeld. The Kommando needs eight to ten days to achieve full battle strength . . .
At Lechfeld, Major Erich Hohagen, an experienced fighter pilot, took over as Nowotny’s successor. Wegmann remained as adjutant. By mid-December 1944 new aircraft had been flown in and flight-tested and a new draft of pilots afforded conversion training and a short technical course. By then Galland had specified as future operational bases the aerodromes at Brandenburg-Briest, Parchim and Oranienburg – all on the outskirts of Berlin. Kommando Nowotny was renamed JG7. Major Hohagen was named commander of III/JG7. Groups I and II were formed at Neumünster. Oberst Steinhoff, who had been involved with the Reich air defences with his old squadron since the retreats from North Africa and Italy, was appointed JG7 commodore.
More precious weeks were lost to unproductive maintenance or the laborious construction of ground installations. After Hohagen’s III/JG7 had been transferred, the major delays were the time-consuming rail deliveries of aircraft and equipment from Lechfeld, Schwäbisch Hall or even Leipheim. The trains were under perpetual threat of attack from low-flying enemy aircraft throughout the day. Whence the order came that new aircraft should be delivered by train cannot be established. It meant that aircraft which had been flown to one of the three airfields had to be dismantled for transport by rail, this being a 500-kilometre journey at the mercy of enemy fighters which roamed at low level virtually unopposed. The actual figure of Me 262s destroyed while being transported by rail is not known. Those that arrived unscathed had then to be reassembled and flight tested again. Messerschmitt AG built an assembly hangar with all the necessary equipment at Brandenburg-Briest, but this was all much slower than having the aircraft ferried in by air. Messerschmitt’s chief test pilot, Fritz Wendel, was in charge of flight-testing at Brandenburg-Briest and provided the official explanation for the long drawn-out transport operation and duplicated flight testing. Since there were insufficient pilots available to ferry the completed machines from assembly hangar to operational bases, the task would have fallen to operational pilots, thus depriving their squadrons of manpower. These hops from place to place were not without their attendant dangers from enemy fighters and it was considered preferable on the whole to transfer the jets by rail at night. There was undoubtedly some wisdom in this decision, for ferry pilots had only the briefest conversion course before climbing into the cockpit of an Me 262, and losses of aircraft through pilot error were high. All the same, to the operational pilots of JG7 twiddling their thumbs in the mess there was no sense in the order, for even a delivery flight enabled more experience of the aircraft to be gained, and if it were armed, enemy fighters could be engaged should they appear.
Meanwhile the 8th and 9th Squadrons of Nowotny’s Kommando had been attached to III/JG7. 8th Squadron, under Leutnant Schall, operated from Oranienburg, while 9th Squadron was transferred to Parchim under the leadership of Hauptmann Georg Eder, a young and successful fighter pilot. Erich Hohagen remained at Brandenburg-Briest with the Group Staff.
At this time there was some disquiet in Allied circles concerning the Me 262 story. We know today that the much-delayed debut of the Me 262 jet fighter was something of a nightmare to our Western opponents and for the following reasons. The advance of Allied ground forces following the Normandy landings tied down a large part of their aerial forces. In December 1944 the Ardennes Offensive took the Americans very much by surprise, and in general their bomber offensive was not achieving the effect which had been expected of it. Furthermore some doubts were harboured regarding the ability of the Russians to press on to final success – or perhaps it was the case that this Soviet victory was not really wanted deep down.
General Galland stated in his book that at a conference in Versailles on 11 January 1945 the Allied air chiefs were discussing the possibility of a longer duration to the war than hitherto. The obvious step-up in German fighter-aircraft production was the cause, and General Spaatz repeated personally his concerns about the Me 262 jet whose numbers were now estimated at about 700 (Galland put the figure at 564 completed aircraft at the end of 1944).
It seems likely that neither Spaatz nor his colleagues had knowledge of the various difficulties obstructing the deployment of the jet as a fighter, otherwise they might have had fewer worries. If their intelligence services did have wind of the altercations between Hitler and the Luftwaffe High Command, however, the disconcerting successes almost daily of such fighter jets as were operational must have given them food for thought. A speed of from 300 to 400 kph in excess of the best Allied piston-engined fighters was not the only shock. Despite the defeats in the south, and the pincers squeezing them between west and east, the Luftwaffe was still able to maintain a high level of operational readiness among its pilots, and its fighters remained a potent force.