Luftwaffe Fighter Aces (21 page)

Marseille made an unimpressive start in the desert: within days of his arrival he was shot down by a Hurricane flown by a Free French pilot. But gradually he found his feet. The clear skies and unlimited visibility of the desert made the surprise bounce difficult to achieve. Most attacks ended in a swirling dogfight at medium and low level in which the favoured no-deflection shot from astern could rarely be attained. Marseille reasoned that, to be successful, he had to be able to shoot from any angle. He began to practice dummy attacks on his comrades, seeking snap-shooting opportunities. Standard
Jagdwaffe
procedure in combat was to use full throttle all the time in order to make oneself a difficult target, and quickly to regain speed bled off in hard manoeuvring. Here again Marseille was unorthodox. Often he not only throttled right back in order to gain an attacking position, but lowered his flaps to decrease his radius of turn.

Gradually his feel for the game grew, and he started to put his theories into practice. One of the great difficulties in deflection shooting is to judge how far to lead the target in order to hit it. He finally developed a technique in which he closed to very short range, then opened fire at the moment the target disappeared beneath the nose of his Messerschmitt.
With experience, he perfected his methods and his score climbed. He reached 50 on 22 February 1942 (43 in forty weeks); 75 on 5 June (25 in fifteen weeks); then 101 on 18 June (26 in thirteen days), this rapidly accelerating progress demonstrating his improved prowess.

At this time, if Allied fighters and particularly fighter-bombers were caught at a tactical disadvantage, they went into a defensive circle for mutual protection, as had Bf 110s in the Battle of Britain. The usual approaches from astern left the attacker vulnerable to the guns of the next fighter in the circle, while few were sufficiently adept to get results with full deflection shots from above. Marseille’s approach to the problem was typically unorthodox: a short dive to gain speed, then up and under from outside the circle, using the blind spot under the adversary’s wing; close to 150 feet, a brief burst of fire, then up and away, using the accumulated speed of the dive to soar high above the circle; down again, once more on the outside of the circle but this time coming from above at a moderate deflection angle of perhaps 30 degrees; ease the stick back, then, as the target disappears beneath the nose, a brief burst of fire, then up and outwards once more, or maybe down and outwards, ready for another climbing attack (
Fig. 18
). So swift and certain were these assaults that often more than one victim was going down at a time. Marseille’s wingman did not attempt to follow him through these evolutions but stayed high, keeping a lookout, ready to intervene if it became necessary. It was also his task to count and record the times of the crashes.

As with most air combat techniques, the method was simple. Only the execution, the incredibly precise timing, the judgement of distance and the accurate aiming necessary were difficult. Using these methods, Marseille accounted for six Tomahawks of No 5 Squadron SAAF in just eleven minutes on 6 June 1942. The rest of his
Staffel
achieved virtually nothing. Marseille’s marksmanship also rates a mention. Combat reports analysed in Berlin showed that, at the height of his powers, he expended an average of fifteen shells and bullets per victory. More than one wingman has described the first shells hitting the nose of the enemy aircraft, then ‘walking’ back to the cockpit area. His final total of 158 included 151 in the desert—101 P-40s, 30 Hurricanes, sixteen Spitfires and four twin-engine bombers.

JOACHIM MÜNCHEBERG
Müncheberg started the war with
7/
JG 26
and his first victory, a Blenheim, came on 7 November 1939. On his arrival in the Mediterranean in February 1941 his score was 23. When he departed four months later, after seeing action over Malta, the Balkans and North Africa, it had risen to 48. His penchant for fast diving attacks with hard pull-outs stood him in good stead over Malta, where frequent haze limited visibility and aided surprise bounces. Returned to the Channel coast, he soon converted to the FW 190A and brought his total up to 83. At this point he was transferred to the Eastern Front. Over the course of eight weeks he accounted for 33 Russians but was himself shot down three times. In October 1942 he became
Kommodore
of
JG 77
and led it to Tunisia, where he claimed another 19 victories against appalling odds. Müncheberg’s final total of 135 included 102 against Western-flown aircraft, making him the equal-fifth ranking ace in the West. Of these, 43 were scored over Malta and North Africa. He appears to have been unique in that he took part in all three Mediterranean sub-campaigns.

WERNER SCHROER
The second highest scorer in North Africa was Werner Schroer, with 61 victories. A combat débutante in the Battle of Britain, and a member of
I/JG 27
when that unit arrived in the desert in 1941, he was made a
Staffelkapitän
in
II/JG 27
at about the same time as Marseille. Impressed by the latter’s success, Schroer became one of Marseille’s tactical imitators. In fact, in some ways he exceeded the master: although for various reasons he flew far fewer sorties, his strike rate was significantly better. In fact, the only
Jagdflieger
(as opposed to
Nachtjagdflieger)
to score faster was Günther Scheel, who flew solely against the Russians. Schroer equalled Müncheberg’s tally against the West, including 24 four-engine bombers, and knocked down a dozen Russians towards the end of the war for a grand total of 114 victories, achieved in the amazingly low number of 197 sorties. And, unlike so many others, he survived the war, his final command being
Kommodore
of
JG 3.
The little-known Werner Schroer must be rated one of the greatest of all the
Experten.

6.THE NIGHT AIR WAR, 1940–42

Johannes Steinhoff started the war as
Staffelkapitän
of the specialised night-flying
10/JG 26
based at Jever. The
Staffel
was equipped with single-engine Bf 109Ds from which the canopy had been removed, firstly to eliminate annoying reflections from the cockpit instruments and secondly to reduce searchlight dazzle. The pilots had received little training in instrument flying, and the aircraft had no effective navigational aids.

British and French aircraft carried out leaflet raids in the first weeks of the war, and although Steinhoff’s men were ordered to intercept, success eluded them. Even if ground control knew the position of an intruder, the information was of little value to a fighter pilot who was only vaguely aware of his own position. And even if he could have been brought close, near-perfect visibility was needed to gain visual contact.

Late in September, Steinhoff was ordered to Berlin to attend a conference on night fighting. That the
Luftwaffe
High Command had little idea of current conditions became apparent when
Reichsmarschall
Goering in person treated the assembly to a diatribe on how things were in France in 1918. Steinhoff later recalled:

He enthused about flying in bright moonlight, about the stalking missions they flew along the roads of Flanders so as to spot the enemy’s silhouette against the paler night sky overhead, how they had then increased speed and commenced the attack from below …

The young officer tried to explain that conditions were now different, that the British flew at much higher altitudes from where landmarks on the ground could not be seen and that the cloudy autumn skies over northern Germany were a far cry from Flanders in summer. What was needed were new methods of location and tracking, and better navigational
aids to enable operations to be carried out in bad weather. Goering’s reaction was a foretaste of what was in store for the entire
Jagdwaffe
in the coming years: ‘Sit down on your little bottom [possibly a less polite anatomical term was used], young man. You’ve still a long way to go before you can join in the discussion here.’

It was a classic error. Had Goering used his tremendous influence and undoubted energy to further the night fighting programme at this stage, the course of the night air war might conceivably have been altered. But nothing was done at the time, and the British went on to establish a commanding lead in airborne radar and countermeasures which they were never to lose, despite the best efforts of the
Luftwaffe.
Shortly afterwards, Steinhoff, unhappy with his lot, transferred to day fighters.

With the invasion of France, the RAF commenced bombing raids against mainland German targets. The new radar-laid gun defences proved less competent than predicted, and the handful of night-flying Bf 109Ds were ineffective. Something better was needed, both aircraft and detection and reporting system, and urgently.

The choice of a new night fighter fell by default on the Bf 110. It was fast enough to overhaul the British bombers in an extended chase, it was relatively heavily armed and its endurance was adequate. It was large enough to accommodate the extra systems required without undue problems, and its benign handling made it well suited to night operations. Best of all, it carried a radio operator/gunner who could assist with navigation.

The greatest difficulty with night fighting is finding the target—’like trying to catch flies in a dark room’, as the early
Nachtjagdflieger
succinctly put it. The best hope seemed to be to work in conjunction with searchlight batteries, attacking bombers that were illuminated by the latter. This was undesirable for several reasons. Most searchlights were concentrated around industrial areas, which meant that interceptions could only be made when the bombers were already over the target. Then, even if a bomber was caught by searchlights, it remained invisible from above. The night fighter pilot could only see it if he was at a lower altitude and looking up. This meant that he could only pursue in a climb, which reduced his speed advantage. Over defended zones, the
fighters were frequently dazzled by the searchlights and shot at by ‘friendly’ flak. Finally, concentrations of searchlights often gave away the position of worthwhile targets to the bombers.

The next step was to shift the searchlights away from industrial areas and establish a continuous belt of lights and sound locators on the approaches to Germany. Night fighters then patrolled the edges of the belt, ready to pursue any bomber unfortunate enough to be caught in the beams. This was an improvement, but it was still not very productive. If there was more than 5/10ths cloud cover the searchlights were ineffective, and clearer conditions than this were rare over northern Europe. Furthermore, when the bombers reached the beginning of the fourteen-mile wide illuminated area, they opened the throttles and sped across it as fast as possible, reducing the time available for the night fighter to engage to a maximum of three minutes. Unless a fighter was ideally placed at the first sighting, this was insufficient.

There were, however, a few successes. Werner Streib of the newly formed
I/NJG 1
scored his first night victory on 20 July 1940, without the aid of searchlights. Quite by chance he spotted an indistinct shape about 900 feet ahead and off to starboard. It looked like another Bf 110. Fearing a tragedy, Streib crept up until he was almost wingtip to wingtip. Only at this range could he identify it as a Whitley bomber. He swung away, carefully so as not to lose contact, then made a quartering attack from astern. Two brief bursts of fire, ineffectually answered by the enemy gunner, set the starboard engine on fire. On the following night he did it again, as did four others, among them the budding
Experten
Walter Ehle (final score 38) and Siegfried Wandam (10). But this promising beginning proved illusory: it was a long time before five more victories were again claimed in a single night.

What was needed was a system that was not dependent on favourable weather conditions. This meant a comprehensive radar detection, tracking and reporting system, allied to close ground control. This did not yet exist, and it would take time to set up and become operational.

There was, however, an alternative. British bombers could always be found over their own bases, and intruder missions, if they caused enough
casualties, could disrupt raids on the Third Reich. Ideally an intruder needed the endurance to loiter over Britain for extended periods while looking for trade, it needed a heavy gun armament for air-to-air encounters, and it should also carry a small bomb load with which to attack the airfields themselves. The Bf 110 lacked the necessary endurance, nor did it have provision for an internal bomb load.

A ready-made alternative was to hand. A bomber unit based in Norway rather unusually contained a single
Zerstörer Staffel
It was equipped with the Junkers Ju 88C-2, which differed from the bomber variant in having a ‘solid’ nose fitted with a single 20mm MG FF cannon and three 7.9mm machine guns. Redesignated
4/NJG
7, this unit was transferred to Germany in July 1940, where it was joined by
5/NJG 1
, equipped with the solid-nosed Dornier Do 17Z-10, and the newly formed
6/NJG
7, which also flew Ju 88C-2s, to become
II/NJG 1
. As the idea of a complete intruder
Geschwader
gained ground, it was redesignated
I/NJG 2.