Der Adler

The Official Nazi Luftwaffe Magazine: The English Language Editions

Bob Carruthers

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781781591406
• eBook ISBN: 9781473846500
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Der Adler was the official magazine of the Luftwaffe in World War II. In the years before Hitler declared war on America an English language edition of Der Adler costing eight cents was published and widely sold in the USA. The magazine was available on American news stands and the surviving English language editions provide readers who do not speak German with a fascinating primary source from inside the Third Reich. The magazine was at its best and most interesting during the years of German ascendancy between 1940 and 1942. From that point onwards the Luftwaffe had less and less to celebrate and Der Adler tended to concentrate on the exploits of the Luftwaffe ground forces especially the burgeoning Falshirmjaeger divisions. This selection of the best of the English language articles from Der Adler provides a privileged glimpse inside the Luftwaffe during its years of triumph between 1940 and 1942.

Fliegerbummel durch Wien

Airmen Take a Stroll through Vienna

Immer wieder wird die von Geschichte und Romantik umwobene Donaustadt unseren Soldaten zum Erlebnis. Natürlich ist das Wahrzeichen Wiens, der „Steffel“, eines der Hauptziele ihres Stadtrundganges

A visit to the town on the Danube famous in history and romance is always an unforgettable experience for our soldiers. St. Stephan’s Cathedral, one of the landmarks of Vienna, popularly known as the “Steffy”, is naturally one of the chief sights to be seen on their walk round the town

Wenn man sich an den vielen Kunstschätzen müde gesehen hat, dann geht’s in den Prater, wo die Schießbuden besondere Anziehungskraft ausüben Aufn. PK Sturm (4)

When art treasures begin to pall, a visit to the Prater is indicated, where the shooting galleries form a great attraction for the present visitors

Die deutschen Kulturschätze in den Museen finden ebenso großes Interesse wie die Baudenkmäler der Stadt. Unten der Brunnen am Michaelerplatz

The great treasures of German culture in the museums arouse as mach interest as the architectural monuments of the town. Below: The fountain at the Michaeler-Platz

Dive Bombers in Action

Oberleutnant Peltz at last found time to inspect his squadron and found that two machines were missing. That was unfortunately only a bitter confirmation of what he had already seen; during the air fight a Ju 87 had withdrawn with a trail of smoke behind it. Oberleutnant Peltz throttled down to let the squadron pass and was able to ascertain by the marks of the various machines that it must have been Leutnant Haller. At that moment, the squadron was just flying over the German front lines, Peltz saw a tall pillar of smoke rising from the ground. That would not of itself have attracted any special attention, because all sorts of things were burning in the neighborhood, but Oberleutnant Peltz happened to have sighted precisely that smoke, being animated by an indefinite suspicion. He accordingly flew lower and, sure enough, a Ju 87 — Haller’s machine — was ablaze there. In spite of the severe damage to the plane, he had after all succeeded in reaching his own side of the lines. Peltz dropped to a low height above the ground and saw Haller, his face as black as that of a nigger, frantically waving.

The infantry help

Haller appears to be uninjured, but his gunner is lying motionless beside a tree. Help is evidently urgently needed. But how is that to be managed? A bright idea strikes Peltz as he discovers infantry on the march on a small road not far from where the emergency landing had taken place. He climbs a little and writes a note, with his left hand on the control column: “Wounded airman 300 metres west of the road beside burning plane. Needs help.” Placing the note in a message-bag, he dives down again over the infantry, who were dislocating their necks watching the pilot doing funny stunts just overhead. A few feet above the head of the battalion, Peltz lets the message-bag with its long colored streamer flatter down and sees a number of infantrymen running to pick it up. If the wounded man can still be helped at all, his safety is now assured; for a surgeon always accompanies an infantry battalion. While flying after his squadron, now disappearing over the northern horizon, Oberleutnant Peltz reflects that flight leader Oberleutnant Unbehauen is still missing, as far as he had been able to observe. He is unable quite to grasp the fact that something should have happened precisely to that Sunbird, nicknamed Zaratza. Peltz is rather depressed, as he finally lands, at the thought that the very first air combat in the west should have cost him two losses. Two machines are gone. One was that piloted by Leutnant Haller, which he had sighted ablaze on the ground, and the other was that of Oberleutnant Unbehauen, about whose whereabouts he still knows nothing. It is no comfort to hear that the other squadrons of the wing have also suffered losses during the attack by the French pursuit planes.

Peltz is called to the telephone. And who should report himself, but Zaratza the Sunbird, radiant as ever!

“Quite right, chief”, he reports, „Landed smoothly on German territory, although with 65 hits. Can you send a “Stork” round at once? Petrick has two gunshot wounds in the abdomen. Landed at such and such a place. If I was able to land with the Ju 87, you can certainly pull it off with the “Stork”.”

“I’ll come along myself right away”, replies Oberleutnant Peltz. “In fifteen minutes at the outside you may expect me.”

And then everything must go at top speed.

Man in distress

The “Stork” is already waiting with its engine running, started up by speedy hands; for the personnel had at once understood from fragments of the telephone conversation what had to be done. Oberleutnant Peltz runs to the “Stork”, just as he is, and climbs in. The door is flung to behind him and off he goes. The emergency landing ground, the second that he had had occasion to view from the air that day, is soon located. A Ju 87 standing in an open field is hardly an object that can easily be overlooked, when the approximate location is known. The picture that presents itself closely resembles that shown by the machine of Leutnant Haller. The radio operator is lying on the grass beside the plane and Zaratza is waving. The resemblance with the situation of Haller and his crew, seen just a few minutes previously, is so strong that the observation subconsciously strikes Oberleutnant Peltz, as he lands, that Zaratza is not black in the face, as Haller had been.

Peltz brings the “Stork” to a stop a few feet away from the Ju 87 and jumps out. Non-commissioned officer Petrick is lying quiet and pale on his back. He appears to be unconscious, his combination suit is saturated with blood.

“We’ll set him on the middle seat. You take the rear seat, Zaratza, and hold him tight. Take a hold.”

The wounded man is cautiously carried the few steps to the “Stork”. Oberleutnant Unbehauen climbs in first, grasps the non-commissioned officer under the arms and helps him into the plane, while Oberleutnant Peltz lifts his feet. Petrick groans. Finally they manage to lift him on the seat, where he collapses. Zaratza embraces him with his arms from behind and holds him tight.

Within 65 minutes after receiving the two bullets, the air gunner Petrick is lying on the operating table. It may be added here that he has meanwhile fully recovered, but the doctors left no doubt on the point that it would have been impossible to save him but for rapid transport to hospital.

At last Oberleutnant Unbehauen finds time to report his experiences in the air combat to his squadron leader.

“Petrick must have been wounded at the very beginning of the attack by the enemy planes. I see the tracer filaments constantly flitting about the cockpit and hear a cracking and clicking in the engine, but Petrick is not shooting. I yell to him, “Shoot, boy, shoot”, and the poor devil actually pulls himself together and shoots off, as I have seen, five drums of ammunition, with which he brought down the French pilot. Then he collapsed. Isn’t it too bad to think that precisely Petrick, who was given the nickname of “stop-butt” on account of his waistline, must actually serve to stop a couple of bullets!”

To the front in a taxi-cab

That afternoon Leutnant Migeot arrived in a French taxicab after a more than adventurous journey. He had had to make an emergency landing with numerous hits in the engine after the fight with the attack planes. His radio operator was badly wounded and unfortunately died soon after landing. Migeot had no idea where he had come down and did not know whether the territory had already been occupied by our troops, or whether it was still in French hands. But he said to himself, as he told us, that only bluff could help him. Armed with his two guns and that of the dead gunner, he wandered to the nearest farmhouse and first of all asked for something to eat, because he was very hungry. Then he demanded a car at once, putting on his most martial air. Supported by his two guns, he uttered frightful threats in case of treachery. He did not himself believe that he would pull it off, but the incredible happened: a car actually came round in half an hour! The chauffeur first had the articles of war read to him, the two guns lending emphasis to Migeot’s remarks, and then off they went. Migeot told the chauffeur to drive him as quickly as possible to the German lines. And once more the unlikely happened; Leutnant Migeot reached the head of the German infantry without having a brush with French troops. It was then no great distance to the field airdrome.

Shortly afterwards Leutnant Haller also arrived with his hand already in a plaster of Paris dressing; he had sprained it at the emergency landing.

Attack on Chémery

The breakthrough at Sedan had succeeded. The German tank divisions wheeled to the right and accomplished their historic drive to the sea at Abbeville. The French made furious exertions to take the tanks in the flank and from the rear, so that the stuka crews had often to carry out attacks for the relief of the tanks. Once there was an attack on Chémery, the order expressly stating that French tanks in and around Chémery were not to be attacked after 12 o’clock, the German staff having calculated that the German tanks would have reached the place by that time. That limitation of the attack in point of time was intended to prevent the dive-bombers from bombing their own tanks. Peltz saw large numbers of tanks on the battlefield near Chémery, but neither crosses nor cockades were to be made out, owing to the dust they raised. Peltz made his squadron form a defensive circle round him and dived in order to see whether he had to do with friend or foe. Suddenly the cry was raised, “Pursuit planes coming from the sun!” Peltz zoomed up to his squadron at once and already saw the white phosphorus filaments buzzing through the air. A Ju 87 had plainly been hit and Peltz recognized to his dismay that it was the commander’s plane. He gave orders by radio for the squadron to collect in the air space above Sedan. The commander’s machine was already smoking and Peltz with his squadron placed himself over and above him as cover. A French Morane zoomed up steeply in front of the wing and thereby got in the way of the concentrated fire of the fixed weapons of the pilots. That French plane simply burst asunder and its parts flew in all directions — the engine-cover, metal sheeting, fairings, and finally the wings. In the meantime, as the stuka crews noticed to their joy, German pursuit planes had arrived and a Morane was shot to pieces by a German pilot before their eyes in a really wonderful way, that plane also breaking up into its component parts. The squadron collected over its own ground at Sedan, while the commander flew home. It was afterwards found that his gunner, Oberfeldwebel (First Sergeant) Herzog, had been killed by two cannon shots. Major Sigel himself had been lightly grazed on the neck, but the burn fortunately merely caused a painful blister. He reached home safely, although his machine had been riddled like a sieve.

“Hold on! Our own tanks!”

The squadron once more advanced on Chémery from Sedan, but had hardly reached the battefield, before the troublesome Moranes once more made t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright Page
• Heinkel-Bomber
• Das halten Deutiche Flugzeuge mis
• Die schnellen Kanonen von Abbeville
• Sie haben es so gewollt!
• FLUGPLÄTZE VERNICHTET!
• Ein Angriff und feine Wirtung
• STUKAS am Feind
• Fliegerbummel durch Wien
• England im Bomb enhagel
• Fetzt aŭch Liktorenbündel über England
• Der halbierte Britendampfer
• STUKAS am Feind
• A Thrust at England’s Flank
• Birmingham
• So jagten wir sie in ven grund
• Ran an den Feind
• Bomben Albions aut Rüstung
• Sie werden Churchill „besuchen“
• Nachtflug gegen England
• LN in Paris und am Kanal
• Fw 190 jagt Spitfire
• STUKAS Ein neuer Film
• Mit dem Kriegsverdienstkreuz I. Klasse ausgezeichnet
• Flieger und Soldaten
• Ehre den Siegern
• Der Reichsmarschall
• Es ist si schön Soldat zu sein …
• Der Jäger und seine Waffe
• Was ziehen unsere Flieger an?
• 15 Jahre Deutsche Lufthansa
• Das Gesicht des deutschen Flugzeuges
• In 40 minuten montiert
• Heinkel-Jäger
• Die Führungsgruppe der schnellsten Waffe
• Das Gesicht des Fliegers
• Ein„fliegen der Bleistift“
• Short-Distance Scouting Focke-Wulf FW 189
• Das “Fliegende Auge”
• Schriftleiter werden Fliegerschiitzen
• So mohnen unsere Soldaten
• Schöne Bauten der Deutschen Justwaffe
• Fähnrich X wird Offizier
• Fliegerheim PARIS
• RAD
• Luftwaffe
• Vom MODELL zum BOMBER
• Flak bastelt ihre Ziele
• Flugzeugkonstrukteur in zwei Kriegen
• Modellflieger von heute-Kampfflieger von morgen
• Von den Verkehrswächtern des Luftraums
• Hierentstehen unsere Stukas
• Ein Flugzeugträger
• Wir fliegen bewaffnete Aufklärung
• Gerüstet für die Luftwaffe
• Geschütz feuerbereit!
• Japans luftwaffe gerüstet
• Der deutsche Zerstöre
• Max Schmeling
• Spaniens Jugend lernt fliegen
• Zerstörer am südlichen Himmel
• Vier auf Leben und Jod
• Zwischenlandung in Libyen
• „Flúgel des Krieges‟
• it Bomben und MG
• Schwarze Schwarzen Jungens im Erdteil
• Drehscheibe zwischen 3 Kontinenten
• Köche im Süden
• VORSTOSS in die STRATOSPHARE
• Bomben auf Belgrad
• Bulgariens Flieger
• Auf Bulgarischen Flugplätzen
• Waffen Kameraden
• Ins Hez, der Sowjet macht