Hitler's Jet Plane (19 page)

10

Rudi Sinner and III/JG7 – Best of All German Jet-fifghter Units

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n a letter to the author dated 26 January 1977, Adolf Galland stated that when the Kommando Nowotny had been reformed into III/JG7, it became the best of all the jet-fighter units. Rudolf Sinner was commander of III/JG7 from its inception until 4 April 1945 when his Luftwaffe flying career came to an abrupt end.

During the opening phase of the Normandy landings, Hauptmann Rudolf Sinner was commander of I/JG27. His mission was to lead his Group flying Me 109s to an operational area south of Caen, and he had taken off from Vertus airfield near Epernay in Champagne. Once in the air he discovered that his guns were unserviceable and in the confusion of the first dogfights a short while later turned for home since he was unable to take part in the fighting. In the skies over Normandy 200 German machines were pitted against 5,000 Allied fighters. Sinner’s return to Epernay was a race against death. In his earphones one warning of enemy fighters groups followed another. He had barely escaped a clutch of Lightnings over Paris when his engine began to stutter at 18,000 feet. Then Vertus airfield reported enemy fighters circling overhead. It was a ticklish situation, but Sinner had known worse. If the spluttering motor did not die altogether, so he calculated, from this height he could get his aircraft down in about fifteen minutes. If the enemy fighters were still there, he would be forced to make a crash-landing somewhere nearby. Feverishly he searched all points of the heavens, suddenly made out high above him four – no six – USAAF Thunderbolts. They came for him, and a few seconds later a bullet shredded his reflecting gunsight. Defenceless, he threw back his cabin hood, tore open the clasp of his seat straps and jumped. He let himself fall freely, struggling to focus on the terrain below, made out the great stretches of vineyards and hills of the Champagne district. At once he recalled the upright pointed wooden stakes which supported the vines. To be impaled on one was not something he wished to experience. Another ground feature worth avoiding near Epernay were the defensive fortifications from World War I garnished with barbed wire. These positions were protected by upright iron stakes embedded in concrete. Once Sinner had identified, as he believed, a large field of low wine-stocks devoid of stakes, he pulled the rip cord of his parachute, and with canopy deployed swept towards this field which was skirted by a broad avenue. Drifting in, he was rotated until his back was to the wind, hit the ground violently, stumbled, struck the back of his head against a low boundary wall and lost consciousness.

When he came to a few minutes later, he found a number of men dressed in blue overalls crouching or standing over him, each with a knife at hand. Sinner took fright for a moment at the threatening scene, and then his mind cleared and he realised that the men were harmless viticulturists – field workers. They took care of him, one man cleaning the oil patches from his uniform jacket and trousers. The oil told him that besides the gunsight, the engine had been hit – he had had a lucky escape. A few moments later an elderly, white-haired, well-dressed man appeared and to Sinner’s surprise addressed him in fairly good German. He had watched the chase from the window of his house, seen the German aircraft shot down and the parachute appear. A horse-drawn waggon was summoned and Sinner was taken to an apartment in the nearby Abbois Chateau from where Sinner’s Group at Vertus was informed by telephone. While awaiting transport, M. Durant explained that he had been an officer in the Great War and was now a representative of the Mercier champagne firm. He was quite open about his support for the Germans and how he viewed with misgivings the Allied landings.

Once in Vertus, the Group surgeon ordered Sinner four weeks’ bedrest. Sinner ignored his advice and, since he felt fine next day, was soon up and about. Forty-eight hours later he was circling the airfield in a Fieseler Storch to make sure he was fit to resume flying but experienced a giddy spell while coming in to land and had to put the aircraft down on the nearest patch of grass. Very severe headaches developed rapidly and now he accepted medical advice, put himself to bed and was flown a short while later to Munich and then Bad Wiessee where he needed a month or so of convalescence.

Immediately he was declared fit for duty a telephone call came from General Galland’s office at Berlin-Gatow ordering Sinner to report there two days later. Upon arrival in due course he met his former JG27 commodore, Oberst Edu Neumann, Galland’s ADC. That evening Neumann, Sinner and Hannes Trautloft, Inspector of Day-fighters, dined in the officers’ mess. First Neumann informed Sinner that he had been promoted to Major, after which Galland and his future successor, Oberst Gollob, joined the party and in the cinema watched a film showing the Me 163 rocket fighter under test. The machine had just become operational, and immediately upon seeing this aircraft – faster than the Me 262 – climb, bank and land, Sinner volunteered to fly it. Gollob laughed and told him, ‘She’s not for you, Sinner, you would have to learn how to glide then take a complete conversion course, and we don’t have the time. Nor do you. I’ll make you another suggestion – how do you feel about the Me 262?’ He gave Sinner a shrewd look before continuing, ‘That should suit you, and you could write up a whole host of Defect Reports about it to help us.’ This was a sly dig at Sinner’s way of getting matters put to rights – get it down on paper. Like Gollob, he was Austrian, but not the cinema stereotype – though sociable, and fond of a glass of wine, as a soldier he put the Prussians in the shade. Not by military posture or clever dialectic – his Austrian brogue was far too thick for that – but in contrast to many he was a soldier first and then an airman. A stickler for detail, he was never prepared to accept second best, nor tolerate anything that failed to work the way it should have done. If he discovered anywhere the opportunity to improve something or even the slightest negligence, then Sinner reported it in a more or less comprehensive Defect Report. His personal combat readiness after one hundred aerial engagements remained as much above reproach as his interpretation of a soldier’s duty.

Reflecting on the Me 163, he saw fairly swiftly that this manned, rocket-propelled glider, although endowed with phenomenal speed and rate of climb, was of very limited tactical value on account of its short flight time. Little could be achieved in the maximum of ten minutes before the fuel was expended. The short radius of action offered nothing useful to a flier to whom the endurance of the Me 109 was insufficient. All the more was he attracted by the offer that he should undergo conversion training to the Me 262 at Lechfeld and then join JG7. He had never flown the aircraft, but what he had heard of its merits impressed him. At Landsberg he had needed only two days’ conversion from the Me 109 to the Me 110, for he found that there was little difference between single-and twin-engined aircraft.

At Lechfeld in August 1944 the Thierfelder Kommando was responsible for Me 262 pilot training. After his first look round, what Major Sinner observed did not please him in the least. He had almost five years’ front-line airfield experience. His watchwords were ‘Preparation and Operational Readiness’. The way they ran Lechfeld reminded him of the peaceful Thirties. Each morning the aircraft were towed slowly to the runway and eventually flown off. On their return, if work needed to be done on the machines, there would be long discussions before the aircraft were brought to shelter. What amazed him most was the MYO procedure. ‘MYO’ was wireless telegraphy (W/T) jargon for ‘Enemy Aircraft Approaching’ and was given as a preliminary warning so that all machines could be brought to protected positions. It was the rule at Lechfeld aerodrome that when the MYO alert was broadcast, all aircraft – particularly the highly valued Me 262 jets – were towed to camouflaged areas hidden from the enemy’s view. It was an obvious safety measure at all schools which had no operational fighter pilots.

Sinner took up this point with Leutnant Müller whom he knew and who was, like himself, an experienced fighter pilot. In conversation he learned that few, if any, of the pilots being Me 262 trained at Lechfeld were from the fighter arm. Müller confirmed that they were almost exclusively naval air arm, bomber and transport pilots from all regions. Yesterday, even an NCO bomber pilot with the Knight’s Cross, Oberfeldwebel Buchner, had arrived, he confided. Leutnant Müller was beside himself with almost mutinous rage. They ran Lechfeld like a civilian flying club. Until yesterday when a stop had finally been put to the practice, every pilot passing out from conversion training had been the bashful recipient of a bouquet of roses. On the credit side, however, Müller could report that the actual training in Oberleutnant Wörner’s squadron was of an excellent standard, and even the odd operation had been flown, once or twice with a success at the end of it. Sinner was able to confirm Wörner’s good reputation when he embarked upon his own jet training course. His first flight passed off without difficulties, he experienced the Me 262 soft-as-a-peach-hanging-in-the-air sensation after take-off and the joy of the aircraft’s speed at higher altitudes. Landings were no problem.

Upon terminating his training successfully Sinner asked Oberleutnant Wörner if any operational experience was planned as a supplement and also if any radio direction post had ever been set up to monitor time in flight and Me 262 characteristics. Most of all he wanted to know if statistics were being kept regarding minimum and maximum endurance at various altitudes. Wörner replied that as good as nothing had been done in that area and apart from the few experiences gained by Thierfelder and his first team of pilots no records kept. On hearing this, Sinner conferred with Leutnant Müller and Oberfeldwebel Buchner regarding the possibility of joint operational exercises. He had discovered on the perimeter of the Lechfeld aerodrome a night-fighter radio direction post equipped with a small Seeburg radar set, discussed a working collaboration with the ground officers and begged Wörner for two jets to try out his plan. Wörner declined with regret, since he was himself short of the requirement. Sinner rang Nowotny at Achmer, explained his idea and a short while later two Me 262s were transferred in.

Sinner’s improvised operation was successful. On the first trial he operated the Seeburg himself while Leutnant Müller went up to intercept a solo-flying reconnaissance Mosquito reported on course approaching Munich. Müller was homed in on the Allied aircraft by radar, came up behind the RAF machine over the city and claimed a kill after hitting the enemy with a burst of fire and watching it disappear into cloud below. It was later known that the Mosquito landed at an Allied base in Italy on one engine, but at least the pilot had been prevented from fulfilling his mission.

On the second operation, Oberfeldwebel Buchner pursued a French-piloted Spitfire to Stuttgart and obtained a kill over the city outskirts. Sinner took the jet up himself for the third trial and headed for a pair of four-engined bombers identified on radar. He had obtained a fighter direction officer from the Fighter Division as his controller and provided him with the most detailed schedules about Me 262s flight timings and other particulars. Unfortunately Sinner and his controller were both conscientious types, and this contributed to the failure of the operation. Sinner had been directed successfully into a position directly astern of the two Allied bombers at 6,000 feet. As soon as he had visual contact he released the safety-catch of his machine-guns and – as the distance to the enemy machines closed steadily – aimed. The range was still too great for a certain hit, but the ‘Indians’ were flying such a nice straight course direct for Berlin that it seemed to Sinner that all aboard bar the pilot must have been taking a siesta. All at once he received in his headphones the controller’s order: ‘Break off attack immediately and return to Garden Hedge!’ Sinner could scarcely believe his ears and responded that he was on the point of attacking. The controller was adamant: ‘Return immediately!’ Sinner had no means of knowing the reasons the controller had for issuing this strict order, and in a rage he broke off the attack, looked left and right, made a long turn suspecting the possibility of an attack from below had been identified on radar. The sky was empty. After landing he learned that the controller – untrained in Me 262 direction – had adhered strictly to the flying-time schedule, the inflexibility of which Sinner had impressed upon him in the usual terms. Thus the two bombers had been spared by a matter of seconds.

It is a rarity to find, among all the thousands of aerial engagements which took place during the Second World War, the respective contact reports of two opposing pilots. At around noon on 26 November 1944, Rudi Sinner took off from Lechfeld in an Me 262 fighter jet following the report of four Lightnings approaching Munich. At the controls of one of these four aircraft, a so-called ‘Long-nose Lightning’ (so-called by the Germans because the forward part of the fuselage had been elongated to accommodate reconnaissance cameras) was USAAF Lieutenant Renne. The other three Lightnings were standard-design flying fighter-cover for the reconnaissance machine. The reports of Sinner and Renne can be matched as follows: