Aces of the Luftwaffe

The Jagdflieger in the Second World War

Peter Jacobs

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781848326897
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473840874
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

A history of Nazi Germany's air force along with details of some of its most successful pilots.
World War II's air battles were fought ferociously and with extraordinary skill and courage on both fronts. The fighter pilots of Luftwaffe, the jagdflieger, in fact outscored their Allied counterparts by some margin and were some of the highest scoring fighter pilots of all time. More than a hundred recorded a century of aerial successes with two going on to surpass an astonishing 300 victories.
In the end, the vast effort required by the Luftwaffe to maintain the air war on so many fronts proved too much. Few jagdflieger survived the last days of the Reich. But their ability was beyond question, and the names of some will live on in the annals of air warfare with their extraordinary achievements never to be surpassed.
In Aces of the Luftwaffe, Peter Jacobs examines the many campaigns fought by the Luftwaffe, from its fledgling days during the Spanish Civil War to its last days defending the Reich, and recounts the exploits of Erich Hartmann, the highest scoring fighter pilot of all time; Hans-Joachim Marseille, the Star of Africa; Werner Mölders, the first recipient of the Diamonds; and Adolf Galland, perhaps the most famous of all.

Chapter 1

Fledgling Days

In time of war a nation needs its heroes and the fighter pilot has always held a fascination that has captured the imagination of his public at home. The first fighter aces appeared over the Western Front during the First World War and, ever since, history has tended to judge the fighter pilot by the number of victories achieved in the air rather than by flying skills or leadership in combat. But these qualities often go hand-in-hand. A pilot with few flying skills was unlikely to survive for very long, let alone become an ace, and those who led in combat were often best placed to influence an aerial encounter and to achieve success in the air.

Those destined to be successful in air combat soon learned that it was not all about dashing around the sky as fast as possible taking on anyone and everyone – those who elected to choose this method were destined not to survive – but they did require a unique combination of flying and personal qualities to succeed: excellent aircraft-handling skills; a good understanding of his own aircraft’s performance and that of his opponent; quick reactions; good eyesight; anticipation; patience; courage and self-control to name but a few and, of course, they needed to be good shots.

The air campaigns fought by the Luftwaffe on all fronts during the Second World War, and specifically those fought by the fighter pilot, the Jagdflieger, were amongst the most intense in the history of air warfare but what stands out most is the number of aerial victories achieved by the high-scoring fighter pilots, the Experten, who totally eclipsed their Allied counterparts.

The successes of German air power did not come overnight and while it could be argued that its origins lie with its infancy during the First World War, the Luftwaffe was born following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Although the Treaty of Versailles was still in effect, and had restricted Germany’s construction of new aircraft types, the treaty had never been meticulously observed and Germany’s interest in aviation had gone from strength to strength with various clandestine methods of training aviators in Russia and a number of undercover air squadrons being set up in Germany. While the strength and capabilities of these squadrons did not amount to much, their existence, particularly as far as trained pilots was concerned, provided a nucleus for the creation of a new and powerful air force.

On achieving power Hitler appointed Hermann Göring, a highly respected fighter pilot of the First World War, as deputy leader of his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (the Nazi Party) and Reichskommissariat für die Luftfahrt (Reich Commissioner of Aviation). The official formation of the Luftwaffe was still two years away but Göring, as Hitler’s deputy, had many responsibilities and so had little time for building a new air force. The task, therefore, was left to Erhard Milch, the former Commercial Director of Germany’s national airline Lufthansa and now Göring’s own deputy as the Nazis’ first State Secretary for Aviation.

More so than Göring, Milch deserves the credit for the initial formation of the Luftwaffe, although he never held any great respect for Göring. Milch set about his task by dividing the Reich Aviation Ministry, the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM), into a number of offices. The most important sub-division was the Air Command Office, as this would effectively become the General Staff, and he also set about expanding the German aviation industry and building new facilities for the training of aircrew, albeit secretly, to create a new air force.¹

The Luftwaffe officially came into existence on 1 March 1935 with some 20,000 personnel and nearly 2,000 aircraft. It was never going to be possible to keep the build-up of an air force secret and so the following week Hitler announced its existence to the world and a week later he renounced the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Selected to be its first Chief of the General Staff was Walter Wever, an infantry officer by background but a man of great vision and a great strategist. Aware of Hitler’s intentions, Wever was led to conclude that Germany’s main enemy in any future conflict would be the Soviet Union. His thinking, therefore, was to produce an air force to take on the might of Russia while concurrently waging a war of revenge against France and possibly Britain. He was also astute enough to know that air superiority would probably be an elusive goal and so he believed it would be easier to defeat an air force on the ground at its sources, by attacking aircraft factories and industrial plants, rather than to try and defeat it in the air. His desire was for a bomber force capable of reaching the heart of Russia’s industrial cities and beyond, and so his concept of a four-engine strategic aircraft, known as the Ural Bomber, led to the design and construction of two prototypes.

Amongst Wever’s other strengths was his ability to work with and manage the expectations of difficult men such as Göring and Milch. He found them both, at times, equally difficult. Göring seemingly had little time for the new Luftwaffe while Milch had risen to the top very quickly, with Wever believing that his military rank of General der Flieger had been given rather than earned.

Wever’s limited experience as a pilot cost him his life in June 1936 when he crashed his Heinkel He 70 during take-off. He was replaced by Albert Kesselring, a strong supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime but another high-ranking officer without any aviation combat experience. Crucially, Kesselring decided to cancel development of the Ural Bomber because of its cost in raw materials to build² and because of its high fuel consumption, which he felt Germany could ill afford given its lack of oil resource. While Kesselring cannot solely be held to blame for this decision, the Luftwaffe would now never have an effective long-range strategic bomber during the Second World War.

The loss of Wever had created a further problem as Kesselring and Milch seemed unable to get on. Göring could have dealt with the matter but chose not to and the internal wrangling would never really go away. Kesselring would later resign to be replaced by the extremely bright Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as Göring continued to make further changes to the hierarchy, seemingly not for the better, as aircraft and armament production fell behind. Hitler now made the Luftwaffe’s expansion programme a priority as it transitioned towards a new generation of aircraft with the emphasis being on large numbers to impress Hitler who, in turn, wanted to impress the world.

Despite the continuing wrangles at the higher levels, the Jagdflieger prepared for hostilities that would inevitably come. The teaching was based on perfecting basic fighter manoeuvres, consisting of various turns and rolls, to position the fighter pilot behind his opponent. One of the earliest manoeuvres taught was the barrel roll in which an aircraft makes a complete rotation on its longitudinal axis while following a helical path and maintaining its general direction and height.

While pure flying skills would help a pilot learn how to master his aircraft in the sky, it was not the only important factor in learning how to become a good fighter pilot. Additional factors such as his aircraft’s design, specifically its speed and ability to turn hard, were vital. The faster the aircraft then the greater the radius of turn and the less its rate of turn became in degrees per second. The ability to turn hard in combat also depended on the aircraft’s wing loading and where all other factors were equal, the pilot flying the aircraft with the lower wing loading would be able to out-turn his opponent. However, hard manoeuvring would reduce the aircraft’s speed. Speed could be maintained by losing height but height was also important because an aircraft with height advantage could be hard to see and height could always be turned into speed, either to reduce the range to the target or to help make an escape.

The easiest way to shoot down an opponent was to get line astern of the target, where there would be little or no deflection, and where a pilot could manage his closing speed to give him the maximum time possible to shoot an opponent down. The closer he could get then the easier it would be to hit his opponent whereas firing at excessive range meant the bullets were subject to the effects of ballistics, such as gravity drop, and a heavily manoeuvring target would be harder to hit because of the amount of lead required in the aim.

As far as a defending pilot was concerned, it was all a matter of whether he could see his attacker; if not, he could not react and often stood little chance. Once seen by his opponent, the attacking pilot could then have the problem of having too much speed, particularly if attacking from a higher position. If too fast, the attacker could not maintain a position inside a turn and would overshoot to the outside, and once the attacker was forced to overshoot then the defender had the opportunity to reverse his direction of turn back towards his opponent. This would often lead to a series of turn-reversals, known as scissors, with each pilot trying to get on to the tail of his opponent. A pilot could elect to keep his speed higher than his opponent so that he could change direction during a reversal by rolling more quickly. However, it was not advisable for a pilot in an aircraft with lesser performance than his opponent to generate a scissors manoeuvre in combat because his opponent would eventually force him out ahead, thereby gaining the opportunity to bring his guns to bear. Any speed advantage over an opponent also gave a pilot the option to pull up and convert his excess speed into height, then use aileron to turn in the desired direction and then to pull out and roll the aircraft upright in a manoeuvre known as the Immelmann Turn (named after the First World War pilot, Max Immelmann, who had created the manoeuvre), so that he could reposition himself without too much horizontal displacement or dive away and disengage from the fight.

There was much to learn but the low engine power of aircraft during the 1930s and the design techniques at the time restricted the number of offensive manoeuvres that could be carried out. There was also the fact that the fighter tactics being taught were still based on those adopted during the First World War as many instructors were often quick to exert authority based on their own experiences many years before. These included men like Theo Osterkamp with thirty-two victories from the First World War who would become the first commander of Jagdfliegerschule 1, one of seven fighter pilot schools eventually established, although the Luftwaffe was not alone in this ideology as many European air forces were doing the same.

The Luftwaffe was given the opportunity to test its capabilities in a combat arena when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. The war between the Nationalists and the Republicans had started when dissatisfied Spanish generals, led by the pro-Fascist General Francisco Franco, launched a coup against the Spanish government in Madrid. The attempt only achieved limited success and so Franco appealed to Hitler and the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, for help.³

Luftwaffe fighter units were asked for volunteers to join an expeditionary force and the first batch included a cadre of six fighter pilots to fly the Heinkel He 51 biplanes sent to Spain.⁴ The volunteers were not authorized to enter combat and so the pilots took on a training role but as Soviet support to the Republican cause increased, Milch and, to a lesser extent, Göring were in favour of providing Franco with more support. Hitler agreed and so activated the Legion Condor, led by Hugo Sperrle. More He 51s bearing Spanish Nationalist insignia followed and by the end of the year thousands of men and tons of equipment had been shipped to Spain with a fighter group, Jagdgruppe 88 (J./88), being established under the command of Hauptmann Hubertus Merhardt von Bernegg.

Those who volunteered for Spain were very capable pilots but they soon found they were up against a stronger force, both technically and numerically, with the He 51 biplane proving inferior to the Soviet Polikarpov fighters; the I-16, in particular, as a monoplane design was arguably the most modern and most capable fighter in the world at that time. The Jagdflieger quickly learned that he could not afford to become fixated on his own target but instead had to observe the overall situation and assess the risks, while maintaining a three-dimensional awareness of what was going on around him, and all while flying in a highly dynamic and changing environment.

Although the He 51 was technically inferior to the Soviet fighters, Sperrle did have the better quality pilots who quickly developed new tactics. One of those pilots was Oberleutnant Adolf Galland who arrived in Spain during the early summer of 1937. Galland was twenty-five years old and already an experienced pilot having gained previous flying experience prior to joining the Luftwaffe. Now leading the third Staffel of J./88 based at the Valencia-Ebro front, Galland displayed a unique style of leadership. He quickly proved to be an inspirational leader and a great analyst by paying particular attention to the tactics being employed and then analysing the results of each mission before adapting his tactics for future missions.

As far as countering the Soviet fighters was concerned, one of the most successful tactics employed by the Legion’s pilots was to ensure they had superior numbers. This not only offered tactical advantage but also caused the Russian fighter pilots to increase their fuel consumption and eventually forced them to land. Then, once they were back on the ground, the Legion’s bombers, which would be airborne in the vicinity, would attack the Russian fighters on the ground. While this tactic offered some success, the fact remained that the Luftwaffe’s fighter force, the Jagdwaffe, was equipped with biplanes that were little better than the fighters of the First World War.

The ongoing conflict in Spain provided the ideal opportunity to introduce the new fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, into combat. The 109 had first flown in 1935 but design had begun in secrecy the year before to meet a future requirement for a single-seat daytime fighter armed with machine guns that was capable of reaching an operational ceiling of 33,000 feet, with an endurance of an hour, and was also capable of maintaining a speed of 250 mph for up to twenty minutes at 20,000 feet. The new aircraft-design techniques included a semi-monocoque fuselage with an enclosed cockpit and cantilever wings with a retractable undercarriage. The aircraft initially produced by Messerschmitt was designated the Bf 108, a quite different aircraft, but many of its design features were included in the prototype for the Bf 109. Its advanced wing, with slots and trailing edge flaps, gave it an unmatched manoeuvrability.

The Bf 109 was introduced into service in 1937 and soon started to equip J./88 in Spain. Powered by a Junkers Jumo 210 engine, the Bf 109B represented the cutting edge of aircraft technology. Armed with two MG 17 7.9 mm machine guns its introduction proved to be an immediate success and the Bf 109B quickly proved to be a better fighter than the I-16. However, the build-up of numbers of 109s in Spain was slow and so the pilots of J./88 had to improvise. Instead of adopting a formation of three aircraft, called a Kette, the 109 pilots chose to base their tactics on a two-aircraft formation, called a Rotte, to give more flexibility.

The balance of air power in Spain soon tipped in favour of the Legion. The campaign also taught valuable lessons about other aircraft, such as discovering that the Ju 52 was unsuitable as a bomber. To be fair, the Ju 52 was never intended to be used as bomber, and was only ever considered as a stopgap, but its lack of performance in the role simply emphasised the urgency of replacing it with the new Heinkel He 111 twin-engine medium bomber and the single-engine Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber. The Legion also learned the value of close air support for ground forces as the capabilities of the Ju 87 won over some of its hardest critics, although its vulnerability to modern fighters would become evident later. The Heinkel He 46 and He 70 were also found to be unsuitable as reconnaissance aircraft and this led to the Dornier Do 17, which also had the capability to operate as a long range bomber.

With the successful introduction of the Bf 109, the He 51 was gradually withdrawn as a fighter but it did continue for the time being in the ground-attack role. By the end of 1937, J./88 had established air superiority over the battlefield. Since April the first Staffel had been commanded by Oberleutnant Harro Harder and by the time he returned to Germany in December, to be replaced by Wolfgang Schellmann, he had scored eleven victories during the year, for which he would later be awarded the Spanish Cross in Gold with Swords and Diamonds, the highest award for the campaign. Schellmann, too, would do well, outscoring his predecessor by one victory during his nine months in Spain, for which he would receive the same recognition. During the same period the second Staffel had been led by Oberleutnant Günther Lützow, who achieved five victories during the year, including the first recorded by a Bf 109, before he was replaced in September by Joachim Schlichting who would also go on to achieve five victories during his nine months in Spain. Both Lützow and Schlichting would later receive the highest recognition.

Small numbers of Messerschmitts were now able to roam over the front line and pounce on any enemy bombers before they could even reach their targets. The early Bf 109B did suffer from limited capability when escorting bombers, and so lessons identified in Spain led to the improved Bf 109C and Bf 109D with improved performance and armament, although these variants would not arrive in Spain until the following year.

Techniques continued to evolve in Spain but one young pilot, more than any other, helped to shape the tactics that would later bring the Jagdwaffe so much success during the opening months of the Second World War. Although he did not arrive in Spain until the spring of 1938, Werner Mölders would go on to become the Legion’s leading fighter ace of the Spanish Civil War with fourteen victories. When he arrived in Spain he was twenty-five years old and already an experienced pilot. Mölders was assigned to the third Staffel under the command of Adolf Galland at a time when the ageing He 51s were being replaced by the new Bf 109. Galland did manage to get ten flights in the new 109 before his tour in Spain came to an end and it impressed him to the point of persuading him that from now on he wanted to fly fighters rather than ground-attack aircraft.

With the departure of Galland, Mölders was given command of the third Staffel and he quickly set about re-shaping some of the Luftwaffe’s fighter tactics for the 109 that he believed would work well in Spain. These included development of the classic Schwarm of four fighters, a formation in the shape of the extended fingers of a hand, comprising of a pair of Rotten with the lead aircraft of each Rotte flying ahead of his wingman, known as his Katschmarek, who was positioned about 200 yards behind the leader with the task of protecting his tail. Each Rotte could either work independently or they could work together depending on the mission and threat. This not only gave the formation complete freedom to manoeuvre but it also meant that the pilots were able to concentrate on looking out for the enemy rather than the Katschmarek having to concentrate on maintaining close formation with his leader.

When operating as a Schwarm, the pair of Rotten would often be staggered in height with the second Rotte taking up a position higher and on the opposite side to the sun to increase the chances of spotting an aggressor by using the sun to their own advantage. The next step ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Fledgling Days
• Chapter 2 Blitzkrieg
• Chapter 3 Battle for Britain
• Chapter 4 Mediterranean and the Balkans, 1941
• Chapter 5 Invasion in the East: Barbarossa
• Chapter 6 North Africa and the Mediterranean, 1941–1943
• Chapter 7 The Tide Turns in the East
• Chapter 8 Air War at Night
• Chapter 9 Struggle in the East: Zitadelle
• Chapter 10 America Enters the Fray
• Chapter 11 Final Defence of the Reich
• Appendix 1 The Highest-Scoring Experten
• Appendix 2 Highest-Scoring Experten by Operational Theatre
• Appendix 3 Highest-Scoring Experten at Night
• Appendix 4 Recipients of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds
• Appendix 5 Recipients of the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords
• Appendix 6 Equivalent Ranks
• Appendix 7 Luftwaffe Hierarchy
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography