Late war air combat...

[mazex]

Now that we will soon get the Bodenplatte map that can be used for later war missions as well, I was reading up a bit on late war air combat in 1945 - to see how much of the Luftwaffe that was actually operational in March / April 1945. I found this interesting page that has a misleading title as it talks a lot about late war aircombat in broader terms with a lot of interesting information:

 

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit14v109.html

 

In the end there are a bunch of combat records from Sptifire MK XIV pilots, all the way up to may 1945. The last report is from the 2:nd of May. I really don't get those German pilots that took off on combat missions in April / May 1945, but I actually had the opportunity to fly with a late war 109 pilot back in the early 90:ies and thought I'd share the story:

 

I was at a glider competition in Sweden where every evening is a nice event with barbecues, beer and talk about flying. There was a white haired gentleman sitting next to me by the fire that addressed me in very good English but with a distinct German accent. I learnt that he knew some people that participated in the gliding competition and he was an avid glider pilot himself. Another beer and we got into when he started flying... So I learnt that he started his pilot training in mid 1944. I don't remember the number of hours he had when he did his first combat mission, but it was silly low - something like 200 hours. So did you get any victories I asked? He laughed loudly and said he was 100% sure that he never hit anything, and he flew quite a number of missions. He smiled and said - "Do you understand how scared we 18 year old kids where, that could hardly do a loop in those late war monster Messerschmitts? The only thing I was thinking about after managing to take off was that I must land this beast now as well. In aerial combat it was just chaos and I NEVER had any enemy aircraft in my sights. I usually fired my guns so that the ground crew and commanding officers would not get at me after getting back. And landing the 109K:s was terrifying - you did not see anything while landing and the narrow landing gear was scary." He said that more than half of his friends that where killed did it landing...

 

So after a few beer more he asked if I was certified to fly the Grob 109 (which I was) - as he owned one that him and his friend had flown to the competition in. He had a heart that was not as strong as before so his pilot's license had unfortunately been withdrawn the year before. So the day after we flew for an hour together in his Grob,  me doing the take off and landing while he flew when we were up in the air. Naturally I wanted to talk more about wartime 109:s, but he wanted to talk about flying gliders instead, that he liked a lot more than Messerschmitts. But when we where landing he handed over the controls and said with a smile - "You are about the same age as I was back then, and have about as many flying hours as I had then. Imagine if this was an Me 109 with that huge heavy engine in front, a rough patched airfield, and you had to look for Mustangs over your shoulder all the time while landing?" But I got compliments for my Grob landing at least

 

I think about his stories every time I come slide slipping in with a 109 to land in BoX  And I have a lot of respect for those 18 year olds that took off in their Messerschmitts and Mustangs in May 1945...

 

EDIT: It is a bit fun that he owned a Grob 109 - but it has nothing to do with the Messerschmitt 109, accept the model number and the fact that it was actually used by an airforce... RAF used them as the Vigilant T1 for training of air cadets.

 

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by mazex
grammar - note about the Grob 109

[-SF-Disarray]

I get why those guys went up in the late war. For one they didn't know the war was just about over. Sure they probably had a feeling that things were coming to an end, but who knows how long that 'coming to an end' process can last? Secondly, and most importantly, that is the way things work. Once you are in service, be you drafted, conscripted or volunteer you don't really get much of a choice but to do the fighting. Well I guess you could say, "No, I won't fly that mission." And then you get either arrested or shot on the spot. For my money, rolling the dice on a combat mission is a lot more appealing than knowing you will be killed for insubordination. I suppose they could have risked trying to land at a hostile base and surrendering the plane but that is a roll of the dice too.

[keeno]

Great story!

[Bremspropeller]

1 hour ago, /SF/Disarray said:

Well I guess you could say, "No, I won't fly that mission." And then you get either arrested or shot on the spot. For my money, rolling the dice on a combat mission is a lot more appealing than knowing you will be killed for insubordination. I suppose they could have risked trying to land at a hostile base and surrendering the plane but that is a roll of the dice too.

 

There are ways to get around combat missions. You'd take off, hear a noise and land. You'd "down" the airplane before starting up, etc.

Sometimes, plane-captains would do this for their pilots, if they felt they'd be too messed up to fly a mission (as stated by former "black man" in "First in Combat with the Dora 9"):

They'd invent an obscure, hard to disprove electrical fault (Fw 190) and down the airplane and pilot in the process.

 

You'd get a reputation with the other pilots, though, if you did that a couple of times. And if there's something worse than death for a fighter-pilots, it's getting a bad reputation.

Peer-pressure was enormous - especially in a society that expects you to show no fear and throw yourself willingly into battle.

 

2 hours ago, mazex said:

I think about his stories every time I come slide slipping in with a 109 to land in BoX  And I have a lot of respect for those 18 year olds that took off in their Messerschmitts and Mustangs in May 1945...

 

Luftwaffe operations from the end of 1944 onwards were cold-blooded manslaughter.

IIRC, the chances of dying as a Luftwaffe fighter pilot  during that period were worse than for infantrymen on the eastern front.

 

 

 

[LukeFF]

5 minutes ago, Bremspropeller said:

Sometimes, plane-captains would do this for their pilots, if they felt they'd be too messed up to fly a mission (as stated by former "black man" in "First in Combat with the Dora 9")

 

Something else from that book that goes along well with the pilot's recollections in the OP: one of the pilots sent from III./JG 54 to evaluate new recruits put it very bluntly: "they have no confidence." Dortenmann as well at the same time, probably put it even better: "what the hell are teaching these guys?"

 

Manslaughter indeed.

[Juri_JS]

Yes, the situation for Luftwaffe units in the west was desperate in the last month of the war. Apparently the situation in the east was somewhat better. Luftwaffe reports show that on average training and experience of pilots in eastern front units was considerably better than in the west, because of lower losses.  It's also astonishing that the Luftwaffe was still able to commit hundreds of fighters in mid April 1945, when the Red Army attacked along the river Oder. This was one of the largest concentrations of Luftwaffe planes in the east since the battle of Kursk.

[Alexmarine]

 

47 minutes ago, Juri_JS said:

 It's also astonishing that the Luftwaffe was still able to commit hundreds of fighters in mid April 1945, when the Red Army attacked along the river Oder. 

 

That was possible by the fact that almost all west front LW units were switched to the Eastern Front leaving only JG53 as the sole Jagd unit in the Luftwaffenkommando West by April 

Edited September 1, 2019 by Alexmarine28

[LuftManu]

That was a nice read, thanks.

 

Really interesting to see what they had to go trough. The human factor imo is always the most important factor

[PatrickAWlson]

It was never the case that there were no planes or no pilots.  Germans had both throughout the war.  The problem was pilots who could do anything other than serve as target practice.  

[Bremspropeller]

The major problem was the lack of gas.

[Sublime]

The major problem was we can start a list of war losing "major problem is" for the 3rd Reich thats about 6 pages long at least