Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (30 page)

One of the most important topics of discussion among the “artisans” of World War II was the capabilities of their aircraft. Just as automotive fanatics love to converse about the advantages of their cars, Luftwaffe pilots and crewmen constantly boasted about their planes’ superiority in three areas: speed, range, and payload. In 1940, a Luftwaffe lieutenant introduced his bunkmate to the
Ar 196:

Airplane motors were objects of particular interest:

The engine was considered the most important element in a warplane, which is why the first thing
Schönauer pointed out was that the
Junkers 188 had a new BMW rear engine, making it superior to its predecessor the Ju 88. Luftwaffe POWs spent an enormous amount of time debating the merits of this engine vis-à-vis the Daimler-Benz inline motors DB 603 and 605 and the Junkers Jumo 213. Planes were only as good as the capacity of their engines, and by 1942 the POWs agreed that German motor development was lagging behind the enemy’s. They pinned their greatest hopes to the creation of the piston engine
Jumo 222, which was supposed to have between 2,000 and 3,000 horsepower. “The Jumo 222,”
First Lieutenant Fried raved in February 1943, “I have seen it myself, it is terrific … 24 cylinders.”
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And First Lieutenant Schönauer was also enthusiastic four months later: “The new Jumo engine—if it is a success, with 2700 hp. at take-off rating—
what
an engine!”
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But this miracle engine, which Luftwaffe POWs hoped would solve all their problems, never went into mass production.
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Amid all the pride German POWs felt for their own equipment, there was grudging admiration for the British and later the Americans. Symptomatic in this regard were the judgments of a first lieutenant and squadron leader of a fighter wing who was shot down over
England in September 1940:

The admission that, when battling at lower altitudes, German pilots had a “fear” of the RAF’s Spitfire shows the
Luftwaffe’s great respect for their English counterparts at the high point of the
Battle of Britain. Also in September 1940, another pilot even complained:

The POWs agreed that new, technologically improved planes would be needed to turn the tide of the air war, and the complaints about and grudging admiration for the capabilities of enemy aircraft never ceased. “I believe we have bitten off more than we can chew with regard to the G.A.F.,”
First Lieutenant Henz opined in June 1943. “To be quite honest, we haven’t got anything to put up against the four-engined (bombers) at the moment. I have the feeling that we’ve been asleep for some time.”
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A year later,
Sergeant Mäckle seconded that assessment: “The English have much faster air-craft: for instance, none of our aircraft can come up to their Mosquitoes; that’s impossible.”
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Both airmen may have hit the nail on the head in terms of Allied technology, but neither named any reasons why Germany lagged behind. German pilots simply resigned themselves to the fact of the enemy’s technological superiority. In November 1944, First Lieutenant
Hans Hartigs, an experienced member of Fighter Wing 26, received what was then the Luftwaffe’s most modern conventional fighter plane, the Fw 190 D-9. On December 26, he led a formation of fifteen fighters to support German ground troops as part of the
Ardennes Offensive or, as it was known to the Allies, the Battle of the Bulge. American
Mustangs engaged them in dogfights, and Hartigs was shot down. As a POW, the disappointed pilot remarked: “Even an outstanding pilot can’t get away properly from a Mustang by banking in that ‘190’; it’s out of the question. I tried it.
It’s out of the question
.”
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Germans did not feel technologically inferior only in the second half of the war. Complaints of that nature began as early as 1939, although they became much more frequent as of 1943. All the more eagerly did pilots await the introduction of new planes that would give them the advantage they long craved over the enemy. POWs devoted long and intense discussions to the topic of fantastic new developments that would soon be making themselves felt on the front. In January 1940, a pilot and a radio operator drew some conclusions about where the Luftwaffe stood technologically. They agreed that Germany had “some really smart machines,” above all, the “fantastic”
Ju 88 bomber.
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The radio operator said he had heard that his unit was soon to be equipped with the planes. And they expressed confidence that the new version of the
Me 110 would shock the British once the planes were finished and came “buzzing like bees.”
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Six months later, two young officers who had been shot down over France discussed the Fw 190, which at the time was still in the test phase:

The “marvelous” Fw 190 was at that point in time, June 1940, nothing more than a prototype. Nonetheless, the news had already gotten around that it was easy to start and faster than the Messerschmitt 109 and had the advantage of a rear, or radial, engine. Knowledge
about planes still in the developmental phase spread quickly in the Luftwaffe. British surveillance officers, of course, welcomed the Luftwaffe POWs’ need to exchange information about the latest planes and exploited this source in masterly fashion. The
Royal Air Force knew specifics about each new Luftwaffe plane long before it was actually introduced into combat.

With new and improved planes constantly arriving on the front, airplane crews had a reliable supply of news to discuss. Sometimes the talk was reminiscent of fashion designers debating the merits of a new fall collection. For example, in October 1942, a
Sergeant Breitscheid
told a bunkmate, a
bomber aircraft mechanic, that he could not wait to see what the autumn would bring in terms of new planes. The mechanic agreed that there would be much that was new, whereupon Breitscheid exclaimed: “The ‘190’ is not our last fighter.”
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Promising performances by new aircraft always occasioned a flurry of talk. In August 1942, two bomber pilots discussed the speed of the Luftwaffe’s new heavy bomber, the
Heinkel He 177:

This conversation took place six months before the He 177 was commissioned for battle, but German soldiers were already engaged in lively debate about technical details like its top speed. The POWs’
naïve enthusiasm for technology sometimes led them to formulate exaggerated expectations for new pieces of military hardware. The English would be “scared to death” of the He 177. It was “the most amazing thing so far produced” with “heavy armament and great speed.”
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The He 177 was considered a miracle weapon, and rumors abounded as to the feats it had already achieved. Some POWs even claimed it had flown across the Atlantic. Midshipman
Knobel had heard in mid-1942 that the plane had flown from the Luftwaffe’s test airstrip in Rechlin to Tripoli and Smolensk and back. Asked whether the He 177 had flown over America he replied: “Over
C
ANADA
, I think, not over A
MERICA
.”
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Another POW, a low-level officer, was far more confident when asked whether the He 177 really possessed that sort of range. “Of course,” he said. “I was told six months ago by people who know all about the aircraft that ‘177’ had already dropped leaflets over N
EW YORK
.”
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This story was repeated by a gunner from a Ju 87 dive-bomber in April 1943.
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The idea of being able to fly to
New York and drop leaflets (or better still: bombs) was a bit of wishful thinking, whose appeal was such that the soldiers did not want to let reality disrupt illusion. No such flight ever took place, although rumors that it did survived even the war itself.
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Similar stories were told in reference to
Japan. Such a flight would have been technically possible, and there were indeed plans of this sort aimed at improving connections between
Berlin and
Tokyo.
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The fact that the flight never happened didn’t stop soldiers from talking about it.
Sergeant Gromoll, for instance, reported that the
Me 264 was to be used to shuttle diplomats and dispatches between Japan and Germany, flying across North America with 27,000 liters of fuel on board. A first lieutenant who was shot down over the Algerian coast in November 1942 went into similar detail: “The B.V. 222 flies to J
APAN
. It has a cruising speed of 350 k.p.h. They refuel for the last time at
P
ILLAU
and fly by night across R
USSIA
to J
APAN
. The Russians have either no night-fighters or only very few.”
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We have no way of reconstructing how the officer arrived at this fantasy. It’s possible that he saw a BV 222 while training on the Baltic Sea and sought to explain the presence of the gigantic amphibious aircraft.

In any case, Luftwaffe POWs were particularly fascinated by large-scale airplanes. The latter were few in number, so any contact with one was something special. Anyone who could claim to have seen a
six-
engine BV 222 was assured of a rapt audience. The narrators of such stories reveled in details about the size and capabilities of the
plane: