More Bf 109 Aces of the Russian Front

SERIES EDITOR: TONY HOLMES

OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES ® • 76

More Bf 109 Aces of the Russian Front

John Weal

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

BARBAROSSA

CHAPTER TWO

ALL ROADS LEAD EAST

CHAPTER THREE

STALINGRAD AND KURSK

CHAPTER FOUR

ARCTIC SIDESHOW

CHAPTER FIVE

STEPS RETRACED

CHAPTER SIX

THE FINAL WEEKS

APPENDICES

COLOUR PLATES COMMENTARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BARBAROSSA

The most commonly accepted definition of an ace, and the one used throughout by Osprey’s Aircraft of the Aces series, is any pilot with five or more aerial kills to his credit. By this yardstick, or indeed any other, the greatest assemblage of aces ever involved in a single campaign came from the ranks of the Luftwaffe Jagdgruppen engaged against the Soviet Red Air Force between June 1941 and May 1945.

In the first volume of this two-part work (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 37 – Bf 109 Aces of the Russian Front), an attempt was made briefly to describe the background, and explain the unique set of circumstances, that led up to the air war in the east. This conflict gave many German fighter pilots, both veteran and tyro alike, the chance to amass huge scores against their numerically superior communist opponents. In its early stages at least, the conflict was very much a one-sided contest fought against an ill-prepared, inadequately trained, poorly equipped and badly led enemy. Many months would pass before the Soviets rectified these shortcomings, and before their sheer weight of numbers finally, and irrevocably, tipped the balance in favour of the Red Air Force.

The increasingly bitter four-year struggle against the USSR’s land and naval air forces would result in the emergence of literally hundreds of Luftwaffe five-victory aces. But limitations of space meant that the emphasis in the first of these two volumes had to be focussed primarily on the top 75 Experten of the Russian front – those illustrious individuals who racked up totals of 100 or more Soviet aircraft destroyed.

Almost exactly twice that number of German fighter pilots (some 154 in all), however, are known to have achieved scores ranging from 50 to 99 against the Russians. These ‘semi-centurions’, as one Luftwaffe historian has labelled them, should in no way be regarded as second stringers. They were all highly proficient and successful pilots. To put matters into perspective, each and every one of them surpassed – many, in fact, more than doubled – the numbers of victories claimed by the leading British and American aces of World War 2. Apart from Germany, only four other nations produced fighter pilots with scores of 50+, namely the Soviet Union, Japan, Finland and Rumania.

There were two types of Russian front 50+ Experten. First, there were the well-known names whose victories against the Soviets were just a chapter in their long and often illustrious wartime careers. One such was Hauptmann Heinz Bär, who claimed 96 of his 220 kills in the east . . .

The Luftwaffe’s Russian front semi-centurions fall into two distinct categories. First came those whose Soviet kills formed but a part, albeit usually a major one, of their totals. Among this group can be found a number of well-known names, such as the irrepressible Heinz ‘Pritzl’ Bär, whose roller-coaster career resulted in 220 victories, 96 of them claimed against the Red Air Force. Another is Walter Dahl, more closely associated with Sturm operations in Defence of the Reich, but whose final total of 128 included 77 kills in the east, with 25 over Stalingrad alone.

Unlike Bär and Dahl, Günther Lützow did not survive the war. But 85 of the 103 victories he had claimed prior to being reported missing in a Me 262 jet fighter just a fortnight before Germany surrendered had been achieved while leading JG 3 during the first 13 months of the campaign against the Soviet Union.

The second group consists of those pilots whose kills were all scored on the Russian front. Given the anonymous nature of much of the action against the Red Air Force, and the scant coverage that has been afforded the air war in the east over the six decades since hostilities ceased, the names of many of these latter Experten may be less familiar – possibly even completely unknown – to most people today. They played an integral and important part in the titanic struggle between the air forces of the Third Reich and the USSR, however, and, in so doing, have earned themselves a legitimate place in the annals of military aviation.

. . . then there were those whose victories were all achieved on the Russian front. Despite being in the majority, few of their names are remembered today. Leutnant Ulrich Wöhnert, for example, who ended the war with 86 kills – more than double the score of the leading RAF fighter ace – remains all but unknown

As in the earlier campaigns against Poland, the Low Countries and France, Hitler’s invasion of Stalinist Russia opened in true Blitzkrieg fashion with heavy air attacks on the enemy’s forward airfields. The results exceeded all expectations. By last light on 22 June 1941 – the opening day of Operation Barbarossa – it was estimated that some 1500 Soviet aircraft had been destroyed on the ground. A further 322 had been shot down, some 80 percent of which had fallen to Bf 109 fighters. One source gives the exact number of kills credited to the Jagdwaffe on 22 June 1941 as 264!

The fortunes of individual Jagdgruppen varied widely, as so often happened on the Russian front. Collective totals on that first day of Barbarossa ranged from no victories at all to a staggering 36 (amassed, together with 28 enemy machines destroyed on the ground, by Hauptmann Wolf-Dietrich Wilcke’s III./JG 53 – the highest daily score by any Luftwaffe Jagdgruppe in the war to date).

The 20 Jagdgruppen with which the Luftwaffe embarked upon the invasion of the Soviet Union were somewhat unevenly deployed along the three sectors of the main fighting front (for a full listing including bases, COs, and strengths, see page 85 of Aircraft of the Aces 37).

On the northern sector, forming part of Luftflotte 1 (the air fleet tasked with supporting Army Group North’s drive through the Baltic states to Leningrad), was a single Jagdgeschwader – JG 54, commanded by Major Hannes Trautloft and bolstered temporarily by the attached II./JG 53.

Trautloft’s reinforced command was credited with 45 victories on the opening day of Barbarossa. Accompanying II./JG 54 on a bomber escort mission against enemy airfields just over the border in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, the Kommodore himself was able to claim one of them to add to his existing score of eight enemy aircraft destroyed. Although Trautloft’s own Friedrich was severely damaged in the action, he managed to nurse it back to base at Trakehnen, where he pulled off a successful belly landing.

Another five machines of the Red Air Force would fall to Trautloft’s guns before the month of June was out. He was a towering presence, both physically and figuratively, in the wartime Jagdwaffe. But he was rightfully acclaimed more for his qualities of leadership than for his seeking personal aggrandisement and an impressive individual score. Thus, by the time he finally relinquished command of JG 54 in the summer of 1943 to join the staff of General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland, Hannes Trautloft’s own Russian front tally was still five short of 50.

Three pilots of II./JG 54 with whom Trautloft had flown on 22 June 1941 would, however, go on to become semi-centurions. Leutnant Horst Hannig opened his scoreboard with a single kill on this first day of the campaign against Russia, while Oberleutnant Carl Sattig and Hauptmann Franz Eckerle each claimed one apiece – their second and fifth victories respectively.

Although his own total was to fall just short of a half-century, Hannes Trautloft (right), the Kommodore of JG 54, was renowned for being an exemplary and considerate CO. In this snapshot of him congratulating future semi-centurion Leutnant Hans-Joachim Heyer on his 23rd victory (on 4 September 1942), the body language says it all – this is no perfunctory handshake, but a heartfelt ‘Well done!’

Also engaged over the Lithuanian border regions, I/JG 54’s collective total of a dozen Soviet machines shot down included a trio for Hauptmann Reinhard Seiler, thereby doubling his current score to six. In contrast, the pilots of III./JG 54 were credited with only six between them. But among these were a pair of Polikarpov fighters which provided a first for Leutnant Hans-Joachim Heyer and a second for Unteroffizier Eugen-Ludwig Zweigart.

Meanwhile, in the southern sector, Luftflotte 4 was fielding two Jagdgeschwader whose job was to cover Army Group South’s advance into the Ukraine. On the left-hand flank, based around Hostynne, in the southeastern corner of German-occupied Poland, were the three Gruppen of Major Günther Lützow’s JG 3.

As with JG 54 up in East Prussia, it was the Geschwaderkommodore himself who claimed the Stab’s sole success of 22 June 1941. The Soviet fighter was victory number 19 for ‘Franzl’ Lützow, who was another ex-Legion Condor veteran like Trautloft, but one who was already wearing the Knight’s Cross (awarded at the height of the Battle of Britain for his then 15 kills).

One of the many who opened his score sheet (with a Tupolev SB-2) on the first day of Barbarossa was II./JG 54’s Leutnant Horst Hannig. Here, 11 months and a further 47 victories later, he poses happily with his newly awarded Knight’s Cross

Eight of the 24 enemy aircraft downed by Lützow’s three component Gruppen on the opening day of Barbarossa were credited to I./JG 3, but none of these fell to future semicenturions. II. Gruppe’s 15 kills, however, included firsts for both Oberleutnant Walther Dahl and Leutnant Hans Fuss, while Oberleutnant Franz Beyer and Feldwebel Alfred Heckmann added to the three victories that each already had under his belt. III./JG 3 were far less successful. At a cost of two Friedrichs lost and five damaged, they were able to achieve just one victory. But the I-15 claimed by 7. Staffel’s Unteroffizier Helmut Rüffler on 22 June 1941 was to be just the first of his 76 Russian front victories.

To the south of JG 3, down in Rumania, were two Gruppen of Major Bernhard Woldenga’s JG 77, together with the subordinated I.(J)/LG 2. Equipped predominantly with Bf 109Es, and tasked primarily with ground-attack sorties, the units’ combined total of Red Air Force fighters shot down numbered only 15. Among the claimants were Oberleutnants Walther Höckner and Kurt Ubben, of II. and III./JG 77 respectively, both of whom were in the early stages of their scoring careers.

The Gruppenkommandeur of I.(J)/LG 2, Hauptmann Herbert Ihlefeld, by contrast, was yet another ‘old hand’ who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, where he had accounted for seven Republican aircraft. He too was sporting the Knight’s Cross, which he had received in September 1940 after attaining 21 victories. Since then he had almost doubled that figure. The I-16 Rata that Herbert Ihlefeld brought down in the opening minutes of Barbarossa – one of a trio claimed by his Gruppe – was the Kommandeur’s 37th kill of World War 2.

The most southerly of all the Bf 109s ranged against the Soviet Union were the Friedrichs of Major Gotthard Handrick’s III./JG 52. This Gruppe’s commitments were purely defensive, however – the protection of the Rumanian oilfields around Ploesti and the oil terminal port of Constanza, on the Black Sea coast. But despite several Red Air Force bombing raids against the latter target during the first 48 hours of the campaign in the east, Handrick’s pilots were unable to claim a single kill.

It was a different matter entirely on the central sector. This was the area from which the main land assault against the Soviet Union was launched, with two massive armoured formations striking eastwards along parallel axes of advance towards a single objective – Moscow. To cover this twinpronged attack, it was also the area where nearly half of all the Luftwaffe Jagdgruppen (nine out of the twenty) engaged in Barbarossa were concentrated. And between them these nine would account for 182 enemy aircraft, or almost 70 percent of all the Red Air Force machines shot down on the first day of the campaign in the east.

In contrast to Leutnant Horst Hannig’s SB-2, the I-16 that Hauptmann Herbert Ihlefeld, Kommandeur of I.(J)/LG 2,