Luftwaffe profiles (Konrad Bauer, Hans Weik, Wilhem Moritz, Grislawski, Kennel etc )

Bf109 G-6 flown by Hptm Gerd Stamp, Gkr. I./JG 300, summer 1944

 I'm not a big fan of profile artwork nowadays - unless its very well done. For example Mark Styling's Luftwaffe images are especially poor. Once upon a time I did a bit of 'artwork' - some of it was even published, but I quickly gave up since I simply couldn't spare the five hours it took me to create my illustrations. I got fed up with nudging individual pixels around the screen. Of course you can tell that from the quality, but at the time I was happy enough with them. In fact lots of my profiles are still floating around the web, so I thought I'd bring together some of my own artwork - which I've collected from other sites, thanks guys - on my own site. And say what you like about them, I reckon my Karl-Heinz Langer  G-6 of III./JG3 is miles better than Mark Styling's effort! Click on the images for a slightly larger image ..if you dare

FW 190 A-7 'White 9 + ' of Hptm. Alfred Grislawski, 1./J.G.1, January 1944




Hans Weik was Staffelkapitän of 10./JG 3. Attacking B-17s raiding Memmingen on 18 July 1944 he was wounded by return fire while flying Fw 190A-8/R2 (W.Nr. 680 747) "White 7". He flew "White 7" from 27 June to 18 July 1944 returning two of his 36 total victories. His wounds were serious enough to keep Weik from any further front line duties. On 27 July, Oberleutnant Weik was awarded the Ritterkreuz for 36 victories. In April 1945, Weik was transferred to III./ EJG 2 at Lechfeld to train on the Me 262 jet fighter.







Hans Ifland, IV./JG3 April 1944 (reference photo in Prien 'Chronik einer Jagdgruppe')


Karl-Heinz Langer, Staffelkapitän 7./JG3 October 1943. Ignore the model pic(above), the mottle looked absolutely nothing like that !

Walther Dahl's 'blue 13' - the cowl emblem was layered into the picture after scanning it in from a decal sheet printing - yep, even 'real' profile artists take these sort of shortcuts ! Published in Scale Aircraft Modelling, vol 23 issue 1, March 2001



FW 190 A-8 W.Nr 171 789 'Black << + -' of Major Karl Kennel, II./S.G.2, Kitzingen, Germany, 8 May 1945

Julius Meimberg (JG2 ace) and Gerhard Baeker - a German view of the Battle of Britain

In an interview published in the British 'Observer' newspaper in the year 2000 prior to the commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, two Luftwaffe pilots who fought over England shoot down what the Germans refer to as the Battle of Britain 'myth'. In a recent thread over on the TOCH forum I was surprised to realise that this 'German' view of the Battle of Britain is not more widely known - probably because it is rather at odds with the accepted view. This piece should be read in conjunction with my earlier blog post on the Battle of Britain here Luftschlacht über England - the significance of the German defeat during the Battle of Britain
I have to say that I don't entirely share the views of the two pilots as related below, that firstly the Luftwaffe wasn't defeated and secondly that the mere presence of the Royal Navy prevented Hitler from proceeding with an invasion. And while Hitler's failure to achieve air supremacy over Britain - which he used as a pretext for postponing invasion - probably didn't alter the outcome of the war, it certainly did eventually allow the Western powers to prevent the entire European mainland from being over-run by the Soviets.


"...Sixty years after the duel in the skies, German veterans in Berlin say that its importance is exaggerated. German fighter pilots, famously seen off during the Battle of Britain, will not be commemorating their dead this year for a simple reason: they believe the British are talking up an 'insignificant' clash in the skies that did not alter the course of the war. Ahead of the sixtieth anniversary of the famous dogfights between Spitfires and Messerschmitts, German pilots are still engaged in fighting talk over the events of 1940 that Winston Churchill declared the victory of 'the few' British pilots on behalf of 'the many' in a battle that saved Britain from becoming part of the German empire.

At 83, Julius Meimberg is typical. He can remember almost every detail of a war in which he flew more than 250 missions as a fighter pilot, including dozens over Britain.

'It's all exaggerated,' he said. 'Churchill succeeded in creating this myth that so few did so much for so many. When you look at how we fought against the Americans later, the Battle of Britain was very little in comparison.'

There will be no official commemoration of the Battle of Britain in Germany, and the few surviving pilots who fought on the German side see no reason to mark the anniversary. Even if they did, Meimberg believes that none of today's generation of Germans would take any notice or express any interest in their wartime adventures.

'Nobody's interested in that here. There's nothing here, they're even getting rid of the memorial rooms for squadrons. You won't see a single swastika there, for example, because a whole period has been wiped out, even though it's part of their history. I think it's a very bad thing to try to undo history,' he said.

Meimberg was a 23-year-old lieutenant in Jagdgeschwader 2 'Richthofen' when he started flying up to four missions a day over Britain. He admits that he seldom thought about his opponents on the British side as people: they were simply targets.

'The people who were inside them [the fighter aircraft] were the same as us, except that they spoke English and we spoke German. We only saw the aircraft. I find that a bit difficult to understand today. We didn't see the people, only the aircraft. We fought aircraft against aircraft. We were fighting for our Fatherland and they for their England. It was like sportsmen - there were good and bad ones,' he said.

Gerhard Baeker was 25 when he flew his first bombing missions over England and he too regards the British preoccupation with the Battle of Britain as disproportionate. Like Meimberg, the former pilot who took part in the bombing of Coventry remembers August and September 1940 as just one incident in a long war.

'For me, the battle lasted from August 1940 until July 1941. What they call the Battle of Britain in England was just August and September.

'But for us it was only starting. England had declared war on us. We didn't want a war with England. We had the Russians at our backs.

'The Hitler-Stalin pact was an unnatural pact. We always hoped that England would give way and recognise that the Russians wanted to effect their world revolution - which was proven to be the case after the war,' he said.

Baeker dismisses as absurd the suggestion that the RAF prevented a German invasion of Britain by depriving the Luftwaffe of air supremacy. He argues that the German armed forces, which had only been fully reconstituted in 1935, could never have secured a bridgehead or defeated the Royal Navy.

Meimberg agrees that the Battle of Britain did not prevent a German invasion, but he claims that, if Germany had attempted to occupy Britain, the operation would have succeeded.

'The Germans could have occupied England afterwards. It was diplomacy that prevented that. It seems to me that the English led the Germans by the nose by showing a willingness to make peace but in reality playing for time. I saw the British at Dunkirk and I know they could not withstand an invasion,' he said.

Meimberg received serious burns and a number of broken bones during his service as a fighter pilot, but he says that the struggle to survive after the war was more difficult than anything he experienced in battle.

Unlike their counterparts in Britain, men like Meimberg and Baeker are at best forgotten and at worst reviled in their own country. A few tiny organisations, such as the German Fighter Pilots' Association, struggle to keep their traditions alive and to take care of veterans who find themselves in difficult circumstances.

But the German public has little time for the defeated soldiers of a war that brought shame and destruction to their nation.

'War is not the continuation of politics by other means, war is the utter failure of politics and politicians. We're described as Hitler's soldiers, but it is a totally false view that we were ideologised,' said Meimberg......"

"Hitler's Kamikazes" - from Sturmstaffel 1 to Schulungslehrgang Elbe

An interesting documentary film broadcast on Franco-German TV channel 'Arte' and available on a German-language DVD.

" On 17 April 1945, just three weeks before the end of WWII, German suicide pilots - Kamikaze Flieger - dove their aircraft into the Oder bridges near Küstrin -the pilots, human bombs, died in vain in a war that was already long since lost. Kamikaze pilots were not just a Japanese phenomenon. At the end drew nearer for the Third Reich even German pilots flew so-called Selbstopfer-Angriffe - 'self-sacrifice attacks'. On the orders of Hermann Göring himself young pilots fresh out of training school were ordered to fly ramming attacks against US bombers in unarmed and war-weary combat machines or to fly so-called 'total' missions in bomb-laden craft diving them into bridges and other strategic targets. Their duty was to sacrifice themselves for the Fatherland and their chances of survival were slim. This is the story of six pilots who lived through these final weeks of the war as the regime took its last radical steps. Their story begins in the Flugschulen (flying schools) of the Hitler Jugend..."






The first half of the documentary looks at the activities of the Sturmstaffel in interviews with former Sturmstaffel pilots Oskar Bösch and Siegfried Müller, with particular focus on the ramming mission of the Sturmstaffel.



Oskar Bösch recalled;

"...We were young boys when we learnt to fly. In the HJ we learnt to fly gliders. These were 'high performance machines' - I personally made one flight of over ten and a half hours duration. Such activities were actively encouraged so that we went practically from riding bicycles to piloting high performance fighters like the Fw 190 of 3,000 hp. The sheer pleasure of being able to fly was so great you never thought of the three minutes of air combat. The biggest dangers in combat lay in the approach to the bomber formations since the gunners would open up while you were still some way from the formation. The flashes of their guns sparkled like candles at Christmas, it all looked relatively harmless from a distance of 2 kilometres. When you flew through that and curved away, you knew your fire would have inflicted damage, possibly even set alight the bomber - and that he wouldn't get home in that state. It wasn't about killing men - you just saw the machines and they had to be brought down..

...After the sortie we would relax in the Kasino (mess) .. sometimes there would be girls and dancing and accordion playing and we'd drink and eat - lots of alcohol would be consumed so that the next morning if we had to fly a sortie we'd probably still be under the effects of the drink. We could clear our heads with a blast of oxygen and at that moment as the engine was started up then we'd feel fresh again and high on adrenalin. We did everything that we could to harden ourselves, we weren't heroes. It wasn't as if we'd shout " Hurrah - jetzt greifen wir an ! - attack !". no, it wasn't like that at all..."

More specifically on the Sturmstaffel's 'ramming' mission, Bösch continues;

"Ich verpflicte mich als Sturmjäger an den Feind zu gehen ohne Rücksicht auf das eigene Leben..die Pflict zu erfüllen, wenn die Bomber nicht abgeschossen wird, dann muß man durch Rammen den bomber zum Absturz bringen.. our duty if we couldn't shoot the bomber down through cannon fire was to bring it down by ramming, using our propellers like giant circular saws to hack through the tailplane. As to how to do this I didn't really give it much thought - I remember on one sortie suddenly there was a bomber in front of me, and I was out of ammunition and the opportunity was there to fly a ramming attack. I was about fifty metres behind the bomber and caught in the turbulent slipstream from the engines and it was all I could do to keep my aircraft under control. I was buffeted and bumped, and then literally tossed over the Boeing's wing, missing it by about half a metre with my own wing..."





The second part of the documentary discusses so-called 'Totaleinsätze' where the chances of survival were much lower. Chief of these was the call for volunteer pilots for a 'Sondereinsatz' or 'special mission' which would enable young and inexperienced pilots especially to demonstrate their 'heroischer Einsatzbereitschaft' - their 'heroic preparedness for combat' - brought together under the Deckname -or cover name- Schulungslegrgang Elbe.



In the programme Fritz Marktscheffel describes how fledgling pilots barely out of their teens rubbed shoulders with more experienced fighter pilots in the Schulungslehrgang Elbe. There were volunteers from all ranks from Gefreiter up to a Hauptmann and Ritterkreuzträger, pilots who had just finished their basic training and pilots with more than 400 missions. Marktscheffel details his own flying experiences prior to joining Elbe - 'my personal experience as a pilot comprised basic training, training on multiple engine a/c, blindflying licence (especially Ju 88), member of a nightfighter training unit, but just for 6 weeks (no training as result of fuel shortages) and finally volunteering for day fighter training. I had about 50 takeoffs and 10-12 hrs. on the Bf 109'.

Forbidden from discussing the order that had brought them to Stendal with fellow pilots, the volunteers believed that they were on a 'Schulungslehrgang' or training course but after a week at Stendal their orders came through.

'We didn't know what task we were being trained for until Oberst Herrmann came to Stendal to explain that our special mission would be to destroy enemy bombers in a Rammstoß'.



This would be Göring's 'großer Schlag' or 'Big Blow'. The illusion had to be maintained that the pilots would be participating in 'Heldenhaften Kampf' or 'heroic combat'. However, much of the training comprised Nazi indoctrination with the viewing of propaganda films and lectures on the dysfunctioning capitalist system. According to Marktscheffel the young recruits were unsettled by the preparations being undertaken with the aircraft - radio equipment and onboard armament was removed. Many of the aircraft to be flown in the attack were no longer 'Einsatzfähig' or serviceable. The Luftwaffe was slowly collapsing. For this reason around a third of the young pilots brought to Stendal would not be able to fly the sortie. Following an 'Abschieds' or 'leaving' ceremony 120 pilots awaited the order to takeoff. The 'Elbe' mission finally launched on 7 April 1945 was the first combat sortie flown by fighter pilot Klaus Hahn. Hahn had already decided that he would not ram a bomber but once in the air he was set upon by P-51s and in the ensuing combat seriously injured. According to Marktscheffel some twenty five bombers were rammed by Elbe pilots - some forty Elbe pilots died that day. Göbbels' diary entry for 7 April 1945 mentions this first German Rammeinsatz. ' ..The results were not what had been expected from this first experiment '..
In the final part of the film Gerhard Baeker, a former He 111 and He 177 pilot with KG 1 and later Gruppenkommandeur II./JG 3 is also interviewed - ' there was an 'echte Untergangs Stimmung' - a real mood of defeatism at the end. Yet the propaganda machine continued to urge that every sacrifice had to be made for the preservation of our German way of life and community - "du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles". On 16 April Soviet tanks crossed the Oder and as Baeker explains he had to seek out volunteers from among his pilots to fly 'Selbstopfer' or self-sacrifce missions..'da kam ein Aufruf zur Selbstopferung...all attempts to destroy the Oder bridges had failed and now the only possibility of staving off defeat was for suicide pilots to dive their bombed-up machines into the bridges. But I gave no orders to any pilots of my unit that I myself would not have flown..'



Jagdpilot Erich Kreul ends the film by talking of the hopelessness of the situation, of German attempts to prevent the Russians crossing the Oder and his suicide mission - ' I hadn't really thought much about it before but now when I took off on the sortie it was striking how small Germany had suddenly become..' Kruel describes how he survived the sortie by baling out - he had decided that he was unable to go through with the Selbstmordmission - and as a result was perhaps the only survivor of this Kommando.


One final thought - I'm certain that the veterans in this film would object most strongly the very dramatic title given to this film. Not only were they almost certainly not 'Nazis' but the two types of air-to-air missions frequently characterized as German "Kamikaze" missions had perhaps less in common with the Japanese Kamikaze than might be imagined. Surviving Sturmjäger pilots recall very few ramming attacks - in a letter Hubert Engst recalled having witnessed only one - Klaus Bretschneider's ramming of 7 October 1944. And while Schulungslehrgang Elbe was established specifically to ram US heavy bombers, emphasis was placed on personal survival and the option of baling out after ramming. However Selbstopfer 'kamikaze' mssions by pilots instructed to dive their laden machines into the bridges over the Oder were indeed a feature of the last weeks of the war as this film chillingly and movingly makes clear.

Fritz Krause NJGr.10 Mosquito victory

7/8 July 1944
Oblt. Fritz E. Krause: 1./NJGr.10 Mosquito W. Kyritz, 65 km. N.W. Berlin: 7.800 m. 01.55 692 Sqn Mosquito MM147

Fritz Krause's action report for 8 July 1944. He was airborne from Berlin Werneuchen at 00:40 hours, flying a radar-equipped Fw 190 A-6.

"...I was flying over Berlin when I saw a twin-engined aircraft caught in the searchlights; it was heading in a westerly direction. I was then at 8,500 metres altitude. I closed in on the aircraft until I was 700 metres above its level, opened the throttle wide and dived. I came in too low and opened fire from approximately 200 metres beneath and astern the enemy at 01:48 and kept firing as I closed in. Almost instantly my first salvo hit the starboard engine which erupted in a burst of sparks before trailing a thick plume of vapour.

As I had over-shot, I had to break off the attack immediately and found myself on the right, alongside the enemy aircraft whose cockpit and external fuel tanks I saw clearly, and so was able to identify it without doubt as a Mosquito.

I fired off recognition signal flares to draw the attention of the flak and the searchlights to my presence. The enemy 'corkscrewed' in a series of desperate evasive manouevres. Because of the thick white 'fog' of vapour I was able to follow him, although he had already left the searchlight zone in a north-westerly direction.

Following the trail, I managed to attack twice more. On my third pass, I saw a further explosion on the right wing and an even stronger rain of sparks. At 2,000 metres he disappeared, turning at a flat gliding angle under my own machine. I did not see the impact on the ground as this was hidden from my angle of view.

On my return flight, passing Lake Koppeln, I was able to estimate the crash-point as lying some 60-70 kilometres northwest of Berlin. When I returned to base a report had already reached them about the crash of a burning enemy aircraft at 01:55 hours at EE-25 to the west of Kuerytz. My own machine was covered in oil from the damaged Mosquito. I was flying 'white 11' which was a 'Porcupine' equipped with the Neptun J radar and a long-range fuel tank for night-hunting against Mosquitos. One of the crew of the Mosquito, Flight Lieutenant E.V. Saunders, DFC, baled out and was taken prisoner. Three days later, at 01:20 hours on 11 July, 1944, I myself had to parachute to safety over Berlin, shot down by the Berlin flak!..."

Focke Wulf Fw 190 Dora 9 in Military Aircraft Monthly

To presumably 'tie in' with the release of the new Eduard Dora kit the latest (May 2010) issue of 'Military Aircraft Monthly' includes a rather poorly done piece on the Fw 190 D-9. Quite why any editor could imagine that he could usefully contribute anything of interest on the 'operational' history of the D-9 (the stated aim of the piece) in only three pages is beyond me, but when combined with Peter Scott's error-strewn artwork then impressions are rather less than positive. Also illustrated in the article are two Ta 152's -although not mentioned in the text- but no D-11s or the usual D-13. Here's an example at random, but frankly I could have picked any of the illustrations ..this is one of several 'unit unknown' (including the Ta 152 !!) Where did the yellow fuselage band come from ?



Here's the reference photo from my collection (ie does not appear in the article) and 'my' caption by way of comparison..

On May 5, 1945, Czech Radio called on the citizens of Prague to rise up against the Nazi occupying force and for five days Czechs took up arms against German troops until the Red Army arrived in the capital on May 9. Elements of JG 300 - attempting to fall back to Prague from southern Germany - were caught up in the fighting during the uprising. This particular Dora was on strength with Stab./JG 300 and photographed in Prague in June 1945. Kommodore Günther Rall's Geschwaderstab had re-equipped with the Dora in late April 1945. It is unlikely that the former JG 52 ace ever flew a combat sortie in a D-9 during his brief tenure of JG 300. Given the shortages of fuel in the last weeks of the war, sorties flown by JG 300 Doras comprised a handful of training circuits and strafing missions against US spearheads pressing into southern Germany. 'Black <4' displays a representative 211xxx series camouflage finish with a solid RLM 83 dark green engine cowling and an over-painted area of RLM 75 on the rear fuselage, with wing upper-surfaces finished in the standard 75/83 Focke Wulf scheme.

Towards perfection ? the Focke Wulf (Tank) Ta 152 (Reschke, Cescotti, Keil, Aufhammer) - last edit March 2016

Fighter ace Walter Nowotny taking a close look at one of the Höhenjäger test beds. The Fw 190 V32 ‘GH+KV’ was designed as a DB 603 S-1 powered high altitude fighter and was one of Tank’s many projects powered by the big 445-litre DB 603 engine-even though the official view favoured the Junkers 213. Note the four-bladed propeller and pressurized cockpit. This machine would later be re-built as a Ta 152 prototype.




The Ta 152 had its origins in the long and complex list of experimental Fw 190 sub-types testing power plants, injection methods, supercharging, and aerodynamic properties in the high altitude fighter programme. There were two principal design avenues. The first of these was the Ta 152 C – essentially a FW-190D with the Daimler-Benz DB-603LA engine and 30 mm Mk.108 cannon - and the Ta 152 H high-altitude fighter, powered by the Junkers Jumo 213 E and featuring the long-spanned high aspect ratio wing.

There were many technical challenges to overcome in designing a fighter that would likely see combat at altitudes about one-third higher than either the Bf 109 or Fw 190 types already in production. But unlike the BV 155, a highly experimental, flying test-bed, in the end Tank's design simply joined a powerful engine, already proven in the Fw 190 D, to an existing airframe tweaked to perform at higher altitudes and slender high aspect ratio wings. The result was an aircraft faster and more manoeuvrable than the P-51 and the P-47.. The H model of the Ta 152 credited with a maximum speed of 472 mph at 41,000 ft, came close to the limits of what was possible using a piston engine.

The first Ta 152 series aircraft to leave the production line at Cottbus were a batch of 20 pre-production Ta 152 H-0s, which were delivered in October and November 1944 to Erprobungskommando Ta 152, commanded by Hptm. Bruno Stolle and based at Rechlin. This unit was responsible for service testing the new fighter although the pressure of events and the soundness of the design led Stolle to recommend a rapid introduction into service.



 It was not until late January 1945 that the first Jagdwaffe service pilots set eyes on the new Ta 152 fighter as related by JG 301 pilot Willi Reschke ;

“ On 23 January 1945 on orders from the OKL (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe) Jagdgruppe III./JG 301 was temporarily taken off operations and designated an Einsatzerprobungsverband, a combat test unit. We were to re-equip with the Ta 152 – something we’d long given up hoping for. In the early hours of 27 January we pilots were taken by truck to the Neuhausen aircraft plant near Cottbus with orders to ferry the new Höhenjäger to Alteno. Arriving at the airfield we were confronted with our first sight of the Ta 152 H-1, which with its enormous wingspan and lengthened engine cowl hardly looked like a fighter aircraft at all. With feelings of unease we walked around the machines drawn up in three rows (twelve aircraft in total). Technicians were on hand to answer our queries. After a talk on the technical aspects of the machines that lasted barely 30 minutes, we took the aircraft on charge.. I got airborne at 11:08..”

This is the only known photo of operational Ta 152s pictured here after their arrival at Alteno on 27 January 1945. Note that although the Ta 152s were attached to the GeschwaderStab and only delivered to III./JG 301 they are displaying a horizontal bar - probably yellow – over the rear fuselage bands. The second aircraft in the line-up may or may not be 'Yellow 1'.




Roderich Cescotti – a former He 177 pilot – served as Technical Officer with JG 301;

“ I flew a number of sorties on 4 and 7 April 1945 in the Ta 152 H-0 and H-1. The Jumo 213E’s three-stage supercharger and the long wingspan meant that the aircraft was highly manoeuvrable at both low and high altitudes up to 14,000 metres, an unheard of performance for a service machine at the time. We were clearly superior to the RAF Tempest as I witnessed when three Ta 152s of the Stab engaged the British machines on 14 April 1945 in a dogfight over Neustadt-Glewe…”

The pilots of III./JG 301 were eager to fly the new fighter in combat. A first combat sortie was flown on 8 February but did not result in contact with the enemy. The nearby city of Dresden had been pounded to destruction during the night and early morning of 14 February 1945 by RAF Bomber Command and the US 8th Air Force but III./JG 301 had been forced to stay on the ground even though the explosions detonating in the city could be heard on the field at Alteno. On 18 February the Stabstaffel shifted to Sachau, west of Berlin in order to exploit the possibilities for combat over the Hauptstadt and on 21 February encountered US bombers for the first time. During the ensuing combats, Oberfeldwebel Josef Keil flying "Green 3" claimed a B-17 shot down at 16:30 over Berlin. On 1 March Keil flew a sortie in the Kommodore's "Green 1" and claimed a P-51 over the same sector.



The first combat sortie flown by a mixed force of Ta 152 Hs and Fw 190 As of III./JG 301 had taken place on 2 March 1945. That day a powerful 8th Air Force formation of some 1200 bombers screened by over 700 fighters was dispatched to Böhlen, Magdeburg and Ruhland. Airborne from Sachau behind Verbandsführer (formation leader) Oberleutnant Stahl, some twelve Ta 152s climbed away southwards and prepared to do battle with the Mustang escort screening the bombers heading for the Bohlen chemical plant near Leuna. The sortie ended in disaster when the Ta 152s were engaged. Willi Reschke reported;

“ We reached grid square ‘Heinrich-Caesar’ now flying at an altitude of more than 8,000 meters and closed to formate with a Gruppe of Bf 109s that were wearing yellow and red fuselage bands. We could barely believe our eyes when, moments later, the first tracers split the air around us as Uffz. ’Bubi’ Blum’s Ta 152 came under attack. The 109s had opened up on us ! We could hardly return fire on Kameraden from our own Jagdgeschwader and the sortie ended in a complete debacle ”.

While the agility and superior performance of the Ta 152 allowed them to evade all of the "attackers", the chance to join combat with the P-51s was lost. In the event this sortie was one of the last to see large numbers of German fighters in the air in defence of the Reich. Thereafter most sorties flown were Jabo or Tiefangriffe, ground strafing on both Eastern and Western Fronts..

10 April 1945. It was already after 19:00 that evening when four Ta 152 H-1s of the Stab, led by the Kommodore, climbed away from Sachau on a patrol over the Braunschweig (Brunswick) area. 'Jupp' Keil takes up the story;

" We had reached an altitude of 10,000 meters when I sighted a group of Thunderbolts below us heading in the direction of the setting sun. They hadn't seen us. I immediately tightened up on Oberstleutnant Aufhammer's machine and with hand gestures - in order not to betray our presence by breaking radio silence - pointed out the enemy machines below us. The Kommodore initially appeared not to have understod what I was trying to tell him, forcing me to edge in even closer to him. This time he got the message. However his reaction was not at all what I expected. Gesticulating just as vigorously as I had, the 'boss' made it quite plain that if I wanted to go down after the P-47s then I was on my own. I quickly made my mind up and throwing my "Green 3" into a dive, plummeted earthwards at high speed to come in behind the P-47s ... I had been spotted, since the enemy fighters immediately went into a defensive circle. Closing at a great rate of knots I managed to line one of them up in the sight and squeezed off a brief burst from my three cannon. It appeared that my salvo had struck home. Before the P-47s had the chance to react, I had pulled the stick back and eased up into a long climbing curve to altitude. Two minutes later I had caught up my Kameraden with another probable kill to add to my tally..."

The final victims falling to the guns of the Ta 152 were Russian Yak-9s during the final days of battle around Berlin on April 30, 1945. Most Ta 152 Hs, however, were destroyed on the ground by Allied air attacks while awaiting delivery. A few Ta 152 Hs were allocated to the Mistel program. According to some sources, approximately 150 Ta 152 H-1 fighters were manufactured between January 1, 1945 and the arrival of Soviet forces at the Cottbus assembly plant although there is little firm information on numbers produced. Dietmar Harmann has listed Werknummern from 150-001 to 150-040 and 150-167 to 150-169 for a total of 43 aircraft. There is no information on WNr. -041 to -166. Some claim all 169 machines were constructed.

Just how good was the Ta 152 ?

With its scintillating performance, numbers of high performance Allied fighters fell to its guns in the final weeks of the war. The only recorded encounter with P-51s - other than Keil's claim above - is the incident noted by Kurt Tank himself, who had a narrow escape while flying one of his Ta 152Hs towards the end of 1944. Flying from Langenhagen near Hannover to attend a meeting at the Focke-Wulf plant in Cottbus his Ta 152 was apparently jumped by four Mustangs. According to his own account Tank activated his MW 50 boost, opened the throttle wide, and so the story goes, quickly left the Mustangs far behind in a cloud of blue smoke. It is of course worth pointing out that no one apparently witnessed this incident, either German or American. Respected 8th Fighter Command historian Danny Morris could not locate any USAAF report on it, and such an incident would surely have warranted such a report.

The successful combats against RAF Tempests referred to above by Cescotti took place at low altitude, and according to Reschke's account the Tempest pilot made several mistakes (relative to the Ta) which he was able to capitalise on. It is worth pointing out again that the Ta pilot knew exactly what to expect from the Tempest, while the Ta 152 was frankly an unknown quantity to the Tempest pilot. Then of course there is Walter Loos statement that he never downed an enemy aircraft while flying the Ta 152 in direct contradiction to Reschke's account as related in interview to Jean-Yves Lorant.

Until enemy pilots had some reasonable knowlege about the strengths and weaknesses of the Ta, combat reports of its "superiority" are questionable at best. While there may have been no more than 55 operational Ta 152's, there were never more than about 24 serviceable at one time. And they flew comparitively few sorties, perhaps a total of 500 or so, quite likely fewer. Until an aircraft has been in combat long enough for the enemy to have a reasonable idea of what they are facing, there is always an advantage to flying a new high performance fighter - it's an unknown quantity and the enemy pilots do not know what to expect from it. And although ultimately designed for high altitude combat, very few missions of this sort were ever flown.


....and as postscript, a brief note on Jerry Crandall's all-red Ta 152 "story.."

 Crandall posting on britmodeller; "...Both Oberstleutnant Auffhammer and Generalmajor a.D. Roderich Cescotti were highly regarded officers and command pilots and had no reason to make up a story regarding the short flight of the orange-red Ta 152. The complete story is told in our Ta 152 book and in volume 1 Dora book. The flight is recorded in Cescotti's Flugbuch documenting the date, time and destination plus indicating he flew his "Green 1" Dora 9 as escort. During one of our interviews Cescotti was very adamant about the exact color of the Ta 152 as technical officer he oversaw the mixing of color and painting of the Ta 152. I even took varying shades of orange-red painted on 1/72 Ta 152 models and he had no hesitation picking the color. During the 25 minute flight he explained he flew all around his boss's aircraft above, below and along side this unusually colorful machine. In the meeting with the Focke-Wulf engineers, Auffhammer made it clear in no uncertain terms that he was very unhappy with the nagging technical problems and slow delivery of the promised Ta 152s. The discussion became so heated Cescotti felt uncomfortable and quietly slipped away. When asked about Willi Reshke's comments about the this flight Cescotti replied; "We regarded Willi very highly for his dedication and ability we needed more like him, however looking at his Flugbuch he was not present that day we took the orange-red Ta 152 to Rechlin..."

So Crandall's evidence for the red/orange Ta 152 is the recollections (and signed 2001 statement) of Obslt. Auffhammer and Hptm. Cescotti, one stating that he flew it, the other that he escorted it. How much weight one gives to that evidence, or to Willi Reschke's subsequent rebuttal, is, I guess, up to the individual. Personally I discount it totally and utterly. Given the only barely superficial resemblance of the Ta 152 to a Fw 190 D, viewed at any distance, the 'precaution' of painting it overall -red seems overly elaborate in the extreme! But it's impossible to disprove something that didn't occur and for which the only 'evidence' has been 'produced' by the 'participants' themselves. Of course it's difficult to state that without inferring that some-one involved with the story and the artwork is "lying" and that would be a step too far. Possibly. Nor is it something that Cescotti and Aufhammer could simply have been mistaken about. As I say the more you think about it, it still seems a ridiculous way of protecting a Ta 152 on a 25 minute flight. No, I prefer to think that this was two elderly German gents way of simply having a little fun with this "Ami" colors 'expert'...the idea that they even 'picked-out' the 'right' shade of red, well, I'm not the only Luftwaffe enthusiast to find that quite hilarious!  And why suddenly should this artwork/profile be taken at face value for Crandall when he of all people would discount it without photographic evidence. A leading Luftwaffe author of my acquaintance - published by Crandall's Eagle Editions -laughed out loud when he first heard the story and saw the 'artwork'...oh and the new Kagero monograph on the Focke Wulf Ta 152 doesn't even mention the story, far less 'illustrate' it...so kudos to them!

Also on this blog; Walter Loos successful Ta 152 pilot JG 301 and Sturmjäger JG 300 - the case of the 'smoking' log book here

more Focke Wulf 190 aces (Bretschneider, Priller, Bär, Linz, Weik, Migge)

 Revell Fw 190 A finished as Klaus Bretschneider's 'Red 1' from September 1944 when Bretschneider was Staffelkapitän of 5.(Sturm)/JG 300, decals from the Aeromaster 'Rammjäger' set. I've added plastic card 'armour plate' to the cockpit sides, faired in the upper cowl MGs and fabricated some 30 mm cannon in the outboard wing stations from sprue! Bretschneider did in fact 'ram' a B-17 in this aircraft. However this was an unintentional act - a collision - since he was able to land 'Red 1' safely - full story in the Jean-Yves Lorant's JG 300 history.

 

Staffelkapitän 2./JG11 Erich Hondt’s A-5 WNr 410 266 ‘schwarze 13' (see model pic below). The numeral was black with a red outline. It displayed the so-called Schwarmführerstreifen or red diagonal stripes of a Schwarm leader along the fuselage sides appearing as a 'Vee' from above. The aircraft did not have a yellow Rumpfband. Two reasons; Hondt wrote a letter describing this machine and its colourful finish which was published in a German-language book. The pilot was then shot down and the aircraft lost on 8 October 1943, well before fuselage bands were introduced. See Peter Rodeike in Jet & Prop 3/12. Hondt’s A-5 was in addition fitted with the U12 Rüstsatz which consisted of underwing gondolas each containing a pair of MG 151 cannon, one of the few armament Rüstsätze to reach operational status



Revell A-8 in the markings of Hans Weik, IV.(Sturm)/JG3 ace (36 vics.
Weik was WIA as Staffelkapitän of 10./JG 3 on 18 July 1944 at the controls of this Fw 190A-8/R2 (W.Nr. 680 747) "White 7". The wounds were serious enough to keep Weik from any further front line duties. On 27 July, Oberleutnant Weik was awarded the Ritterkreuz for 36 victories. In April 1945, Weik was transferred to III./ EJG 2 at Lechfeld to train on the Me 262 jet fighter.







Günther Migge's NJGr.10 "Kognakpumpe" 'White 9' Neptun radar equipped Fw 190 night fighter in 72nd scale. The 'cognac pump' inscription under the boar's head emblem was probably a reference to the nerve-jangling experience of flying a single-engine fighter at night






Italeri A-8 in the markings of JG 5 ace Lt. Rudi Linz, Kapitän of 12./JG 5 who was shot down and KIA on 9 Feb 1945 at the controls of Fw 190 A-8 WNr. 732183 'Blue 4'. Posthumously awarded the RK. The port side of this a/c featured a large green heart emblem under the cockpit..

The Revell & Academy Fw 190s side by side in the colours of Heinz Bär's 'Red 13' (JG 1) and Staffelführer JG 11 Erich Hondt. (Note how horrible the Academy kit is with its barn-door type wing & hopelessly oversized ailerons. The rudder and engine cowl are also under-sized. In fact the front end bears no relation to the actual aircraft - easily Academy's worst 72nd scale kit)