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    Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet'
    Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet'
    Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet'
    Ebook233 pages2 hours

    Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet'

    By John Weal and Mark Postlethwaite

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    About this ebook

    An illustrated history of JG 3, which flew every major variant of the two legendary German wartime fighters, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

    Jagdgeschwader 3 may not have the same immediate resonance as some of the more famous Luftwaffe fighter units, such Jagdgeschwader 2 'Richthofen', but it is arguably the archetypal German fighter formation of World War 2. Not only did it participate in every campaign fought by the Luftwaffe (with the exceptions of Poland and Norway), during the course of the hostilities it numbered among its ranks more than 70 Knight's Cross winners (a total exceeded by only one other Jagdgeschwader).

    Against the backdrop of the historic battles of Britain, Stalingrad, Kursk, Normandy, the Ardennes and Berlin – this illustrated history portrays the multitude of stories, exploits and ultimate fates of the many aces themselves, from the now unknown trio who achieved their first five kills during the Blitzkrieg in France in the late spring/early summer of 1940 to the nearly two-dozen highly acclaimed and lauded 'centurions' who flew with JG 3.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateNov 20, 2013
    ISBN9781780963006
    Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet'
    Author

    John Weal

    John Weal is Osprey's primary Luftwaffe author and artist. He has written, illustrated and/or supplied artwork for several titles in the Aircraft of the Aces series. He owns one of the largest private collections of original German-language literature from World War 2, and his research is firmly based on this huge archive.

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      Book preview

      Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 'Udet' - John Weal

      A mixed Schwarm of I./JG 3 machines, made up of aircraft from all three Staffeln, patrol over the Channel during the late summer/early autumn of 1940. The Emil in the foreground, ‘White 1’, is believed to be the fighter assigned to Oberleutnant Lothar Keller, the Staffelkapitän of 1./JG 3, whose score by mid-September stood at 15

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      A SLOW START

      CHAPTER TWO

      BATTLE OF BRITAIN AND AFTER

      CHAPTER THREE

      BARBAROSSA — AN ABUNDANCE OF ACES

      CHAPTER FOUR

      MEDITERRANEAN INTERLUDE

      CHAPTER FIVE

      GROWING SOVIET RESISTANCE

      CHAPTER SIX

      DEFENCE OF THE REICH

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      NORMANDY BLOODBATH

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      RETREAT AND DEFEAT

      APPENDICES

      COLOUR PLATES COMMENTARY

      A SLOW START

      One of the minor anomalies of the wartime German Luftwaffe was the fact that its most famous dive-bomber unit, Stukageschwader 2 ‘Immelmann’, was named after the man who was arguably World War 1’s greatest fighter tactician, whereas it was a fighter unit that bore the name of the man who is considered by many to be the founding father of the Third Reich’s dive-bomber arm! The reasons behind this apparent illogicality are of no relevance here. Suffice it simply to say that the origins of the fighter unit in question, Jagdgeschwader 3, date back more than five years before the honour title ‘Udet’ was conferred upon it.

      I./JG 232, one of four new Jagdgruppen to be activated on 1 April 1936, was initially set up at Bernburg, some 140 kilometres to the southwest of Berlin. In common with all the other fighter units brought into being during the years leading up to the outbreak of World War 2, this original I./JG 232 was to undergo a complex and bewildering succession of redesignations. Within months it had been renumbered to become I./JG 137, and as such it was later divided into two. Two of its Staffeln were used to establish the experimental I.(leichte Jagd)/Lehrgeschwader (I.(J)/LG 2 of the early war years). The remaining Staffel was then strengthened to form the nucleus of a ‘new’ I./JG 137 during the latter half of 1938.

      By this time a second Gruppe, II./JG 137, had already been activated at Zerbst, just 30 kilometres to the northeast of Bernburg. And on 1 November 1938 the two units were redesignated to become I. and II./JG 231 respectively. They did not retain these identities for long, however. In the final pre-war reshuffle of 1 May 1939, I./JG 231 was incorporated into the new Zerstörer arm as I./ZG 2 (albeit still equipped with single-engined Bf 109Ds), while II./JG 231 finally emerged as I./JG 3 – the first (and as yet only) Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 3.

      During the two Gruppen’s six-month existence, a Geschwaderstab (HQ Staff) had been formed alongside I./JG 231 at Bernburg. Stab JG 231 was commanded by Oberstleutnant Max Ibel, who remained Kommodore after the unit’s renumbering as JG 3.

      On 26 August 1939, just six days prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Oberstleutnant Ibel had transferred his Stab JG 3 the 90 kilometres eastwards from Bernburg to Brandis. But JG 3 was not intended for service in the coming campaign against Poland. During the opening month of World War 2 the role of Ibel’s command (still comprising just I./JG 3) was instead to provide the aerial defence of the industrial region of central Germany to the immediate south of Berlin. In the event, this area saw no daylight bomber incursions of any kind, either from the Polish Air Force in the east, or from Britain and France to the west. By the end of September 1939 Stab JG 3 had itself been split into two. Oberstleutnant Ibel took one section to Münster-Handorf, where it became Stab JG 27, while Oberstleutnant Carl Vieck – hitherto the Gruppenkommandeur of I./JG 2 ‘Richthofen’ – led the other back to Zerbst as the new Kommodore of Stab JG 3.

      The man in whose honour JG 3 was to be named, Ernst Udet (centre), is seen here in the mid-1930s wearing the uniform of a Flieger-Vizekommodore (Lieutenant-Colonel) of the Deutscher Luftsport-Verband (German Air Sports Association), complete with World War 1 medal ribbons and with the Pour la Mérite around his neck

      Posing proudly in front of the pearl-grey and green Bü 133 Jungmeister (L2+08) that he flew as a member of LG 2’s Kunstflugstaffel (Aerobatic squadron), the young Josef Heinzeller was one of a number of LG 2 pilots who subsequently joined JG 3 and rose to become aces

      Little more than a month later I./JG 3, which by now had joined the Stab at Zerbst, also underwent a change of command. The veteran Oberstleutnant Otto-Heinrich von Houwald, who had been Kommandeur of the Gruppe since its inception as II./JG 137 in the summer of 1938, was appointed to a training post. His place at the head of I./JG 3 was taken by 27-year-old Hauptmann Günther Lützow, an ace of the recent Spanish Civil War.

      Ramrod-straight as he shakes hand with his Führer, an equally young-looking Günther Lützow – future Geschwaderkommodore of JG 3 – is pictured here during a visit by Hitler to the Werneuchen fighter school on the outskirts of Berlin in the months leading up to the outbreak of war

      In early January 1940 Hauptmann Lützow’s I./JG 3 was posted to the western front, where it was attached to Stab JG 77. For the next four months the Gruppe occupied a succession of bases in the Rhineland region, often deployed in individual Staffel strength on separate fields some distance apart. This was the period of the ‘Phoney War’, or Sitzkrieg, a fact all too clearly reflected in the unit’s as yet pristine war diary, which recorded neither losses nor a single victory.

      Meanwhile, back in the heart of the Reich, the operational hiatus that had followed on from the defeat of Poland was being put to good use as the size of the Luftwaffe was rapidly increased. Among the many new units formed during this time were II./JG 3, which was activated under Hauptmann Erich von Selle alongside the Geschwaderstab at Zerbst on 1 February 1940, and Hauptmann Walter Kienitz’s III./JG 3, established at Jena, near Weimar, exactly one month later. Not surprisingly perhaps, neither of these two Gruppen achieved any victories during what remained of the ‘Phoney War’, although III./JG 3 did suffer the loss of one NCO pilot, whose aircraft crashed in bad weather while on an operational sortie northeast of the Ruhr on 18 April 1940.

      Then, in the early hours of 10 May 1940, the uneasy eight-month stalemate that had existed between the forces occupying the Siegfried and Maginot Lines was suddenly shattered by Hitler unleashing his Blitzkrieg against the west. Once again, however, as in the Polish campaign of the previous autumn, Stab JG 3 was held in reserve in central Germany as part of the aerial defences of the industrial regions to the south of Berlin. Together with Hauptmann von Selle’s II./JG 3, it remained at Zerbst during the opening rounds of the war in the west, awaiting the Allied daylight bombing raids that never came.

      During the ‘Phoney War’ period JG 3 claimed no victories and suffered no combat losses, but there were minor mishaps aplenty, including this one that befell 9. Staffel’s Oberleutnant Egon Troha. He stood his ‘Yellow 3’ on its nose while taxiing across Hopsten’s sodden surface in mid-April 1940. In Luftwaffe parlance, any machine in this undignified pose was known as a ‘Fliegerdenkmal’, or ‘Monument to a flyer’

      Things were very different for Oberstleutnant Vieck’s two remaining Gruppen, both of which had been temporarily assigned to other Jagdgeschwader. Having completed its work up at Jena, III./JG 3 had been transferred westwards, first to Detmold and then to Hopsten, little more than 50 kilometres from the Dutch border. Here it was placed under the control of Stab JG 26, which was part of Luftflotte 2 – the air fleet that was to provide air support for the ground forces’ ‘feint’ offensive through the Low Countries.

      Hauptmann Kienitz and his pilots found themselves in the thick of the action from the very outset. On 10 May, the opening day of the Blitzkrieg in the west, they claimed four enemy aircraft destroyed without loss to themselves. The first of the four was a Dutch Air Force Fokker D.XXI fighter brought down by 7. Staffel’s Unteroffizier Matthias Massmann over Rotterdam (this unfortunate Dutchman could thus claim the dubious distinction of being the first of the estimated 6650+ enemy machines that were to fall to pilots of JG 3 during the course of the war).

      III./JG 3 would account for a further 42 Allied aircraft before the campaign in the west was finally over, but these victories were fairly evenly distributed between the Gruppenstab and all three Staffeln. No single pilot managed to take his individual tally to five, although several had achieved the opening kills of what were to grow into impressive personal scoreboards in the months and years ahead. Unfortunately, Matthias Massmann, the unteroffizier who had claimed JG 3’s very first success, was not among them. He would be credited with just one more victory – a Spitfire during the Battle of Britain – before he was himself bounced by Spitfires during a subsequent freie Jagd sweep over Kent, which resulted in his forced-landing southeast of Tunbridge Wells and spending the rest of the war in captivity.

      It should perhaps be pointed out here that the shooting down of five enemy aircraft, which accorded ace status to a fighter pilot in many of the world’s major air forces, including the British and American – and which has been used as the benchmark in Osprey’s Aircraft of the Aces series since its inception in 1994 – was not recognised by the wartime Luftwaffe. Instead, the Germans employed the term ‘Experte’ (‘expert’), which did not refer to a specific number of personal victories, but was used to describe those fighter pilots of exceptional ability and outstanding prowess.

      Tucked carefully away from prying eyes in the sky, I./JG 3’s fighters await the unleashing of the Blitzkrieg against France

      A pilot’s individual score was taken into account when it came to the awarding of decorations, but this did not remain constant throughout the war. In the first year of hostilities any pilot credited with 20 victories was almost guaranteed a Knight’s Cross, but as the war progressed, and particularly after the invasion of the Soviet Union, this figure was constantly being increased until, eventually, some individuals had amassed scores running into three figures before receiving their Knight’s Cross.

      While III./JG 3 was operating as part of JG 26 under Luftflotte 2 in support of Army Group B’s advance across the Low Countries, I./JG 3 had been quietly laying in wait further to the south. Still under the command of Stab JG 77, Hauptmann Lützow’s three Staffeln were dispersed on fields among the Eifel Hills to the east of Bonn. Here they formed part of Luftflotte 3, which was to cover the main offensive thrust into France. This was to be launched by Army Group A, which was made up of 44 divisions as against Army Group B’s 28 (and included more than twice the number of Panzer divisions fielded by the latter).

      After emerging from the wooded byways of the Ardennes, the spearheads of Army Group A were to force a crossing of the one major water barrier in their path, the River Meuse, and then drive headlong for the Channel coast. The success of the German plan depended on the perceived threat posed by Army Group B in the Low Countries, whose advance was intended to lure French and British forces out of their prepared positions in northeast France and up into Belgium. Once the Allies had committed themselves by moving forward, the main assault would be launched in their rear.

      It was thus 14 May before I./JG 3 saw its first major action in the west. This was the date on which the French and British first realised where the real danger lay – in the mass of enemy tanks suddenly debouching from the Ardennes to the south. In a desperate attempt to stem this armoured tide, the Allies threw every bomber they could muster against the Meuse bridges around Sedan.

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