Emil Omert, III./JG 77 in the Balkans

 

Born into a farming family in Ginolfs on 15 January 1918, Emil Omert was interested in gliding from an early age, given his proximity to the Rhön valley. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Luftwaffe and, after his training period, was posted to the future 'aircraft carrier' Staffel 6./Tr.Gr. 186. He took little part in the campaign in the West, was sent to occupy Norway and then returned near Berlin where the unit became III./JG 77. 

After a spell in Brittany, 8./JG 77 fought in the Balkans - Operation Marita was launched on 6 April 1941 with the first raids on the Yugoslav capital. Together with II. and III./JG 54 the Bf 109 Emils of JG 77 flew bomber escort sorties. In the Belgrade area there were a number of combats between Luftwaffe and Yugoslav Messerschmitts. The Yugoslavian pilots were largely out-matched by the battle-experienced Germans. Omert scored his 1st victory, downing a Yugoslav Me 109. After five large-scale raids on Belgrade, in which nearly 500 German bombers were involved, bad weather halted operations with little impact on events since the Yugoslavs capitulated on 17 April. From the middle of April JG 77 was deployed against British armed forces retreating from Greece. Accordingly, many Jabo missions were flown in support of German ground troops on the coast. In short order JG 77 advanced further and further towards and into Greece - III./JG 77 was stationed at Vrba, Skoplje, Prilep and Axiopolis all within less than one week, flying ground-attack Jabo sorties before reaching Molaoi, the airfield at the southern end of the Peloponnese.

Below; Omert in the cockpit of an ex-JG 2 Emil probably at Molaoi airfield and 'white 4' still with the 1./JG 2 'Bonzo' cartoon dog emblem on the cowl..

 

Above; the Emil on the left is displaying an LG 2 Schlacht marking as well as the JG 77 'Wolfskopf' cowl emblem, while 'white 4' still features the 1./JG 2 'Bonzo' cartoon dog on the cowl..

Below; 'Black 11' of 8. Staffel JG 54 with 'sparrow' cowl emblem and on the right a III./JG 77 machine with 'Wolfshead' cowl emblem..

The frequent relocations of the various parts of the Geschwader resulted in considerable technical and logistical problems but on 12 May 1941 ‘Merkur’ the invasion of Crete was launched, JG 77 being the only Luftwaffe Jagdgeschwader in this theatre. Other Gruppen were thus subordinated to the Geschwader, most notably Hptm. Herbert Ihlefeld’s I.(J)/LG 2.  

Below; III./JG 77 Emil on Crete (Maleme) with Schlacht triangle and wolf's head badge on the cowling. Note three Abschußbalken on the rudder. The name 'Seidel' below the cockpit probably recalls Ofw. Albert ' Harry' Seidel who had been KIA on 15 March near Kent/Dungeness in aerial combat with 615 Sq. Hurricanes. His machine was WNr.3725 "schwarze L" of 5.(S)/LG 2.. 

 With the launch of Barbarossa and flying from bases in Romania, Jagdgeschwader 77 was committed along the southern sector of the Eastern Front over Heeresgruppe Süd operating towards the Crimea through the Ukraine via Balta, Nikolaiev (mid-August) and Tschaplinka (mid-October) before moving onto the Crimean peninsula (Sarabus and Simferopol). Omert achieved several Luftsiege in the opening phase of the campaign, including five SB-2s shot down over the Romanian coast on 26 June 1941, Omert was promoted to Kapitän of 8./JG 77 on 10 February 1942. On 16 March, he was awarded the Ritterkreuz for his 45 victories, before leading his Staffel to Africa in November 1942. The fighting in Tunisia and Sicily followed. Physically exhausted at the end of 1943, Omert was sent on leave before re-joining III./JG 77, then in Romania (where the Gruppe relieved I./JG 4). In February, Omert was appointed interim Kommandeur of II./JG 77 in Italy before taking command of III./JG 77, still in Romania, in March 1944. With his Gruppe, Kommandeur Omert faced increasingly heavy American bombing raids on Ploesti/Bucharest. On 24 April 1944, he was shot down over Finta Mare and machine-gunned and killed in his parachute. He was buried in the Pro Patria cemetery in Bucharest, where he remains to this day.

Omert's Gustav in early 1944 with Gruppenkommandeur chevrons. Omert is on the left behind the wing with RK..

For assistance with this blog post my thanks to Philippe Saintes and author of the 'JG 77 Herz-As' Aéro-Journal 'hors-série', Pierre André Brouez...

new from ICM in July - a 32nd scale Henschel Hs 123 A

 

 the 1500th blog post on FalkeEins -The Luftwaffe blog.....

As featured on the box-top art and one of the kit markings options; captioned 'Wjasma Rollbahn', this is 'blue 4', a Hs 123 of the Erg.St(Sch)/LG 2 WNr 2319 with yellow theatre band and Schlacht triangle...

There are plenty of decent reference images on this blog. Check out the following pages;

Hs 123 photo selection from the Peter Petrick archive

Hs 123 of LG 2 in Poland and France

28 of the best Hs 123 images collected for the release of the Fly model kit in 1:72

..somewhere on the Russian Front according to the seller but more likely Poland if this is a combat aircraft apparently operating from an unprepared field strip close to the front. The Stammkenzeichen does also suggest an unknown FFS (pilot training school).

Uffz. Fritz Zander of JG 54 and JG 1

Uffz. Fritz Zander of 5./JG 54 with his 'victory stick' on his Bf 109 F-2 "black 1". His personal emblem "Lia" refers to his wife, Elise. The same personal emblem was carried on a Friedrich, reported as  100% destroyed during an air raid on Siverskaya, probably Bf 109 F-2 WNr. 8905 belonging to 7. Staffel. Zander apparently never flew with 7. Staffel, staying in II. Gruppe and his 5. Staffel. Note the lines on the canopy glazing used as an aid to bomb aiming.

Zander was awarded the DKiG during March 1943 with 31 victories (Saintes, p328 'Les Aigles au coeur vert' Vol II).  

In May 1944 Zander was transferred back to the Reichsverteidigung with III./JG 1. The Bf 109 G-6/AS fighters of this Gruppe appeared on the Wochenschau footage shown in German cinemas on 28 June 1944..

Below; a close-up from the same Wochenschau footage showing Ofw. Zander in the cockpit of his 7. Staffel JG 1 G-6/AS..

 Zander was also later photographed in Normandy, here seen alongside his 'blue 22' of III./JG 1 on the  'Invasionsfront'..

He was KIA on 26 December 1944 over Bastogne as one of the most experienced Ofw. of the unit.

More JG 54 aces and their machines on this blog here

Casemate Luftwaffe Nightfighter Aces 1940-43 and 1943-45 - reviews of new Luftwaffe books

 

Some reviews are appearing for the two titles published by Casemate on the Luftwaffe Night Fighter Aces..

Robey Price writes;

".. I really enjoyed Volume 1 of your new series Night Fighter Aces. I did a brief 5 star review on Amazon (USA). Looking forward to the second part.."

Kylie Newton posted a review on Aeroscale;

" I read this over a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed the book. The text is supported by first person accounts, which are a highlight, some colour profiles, and sidebars / text blocks. The narrative is for the most part near bullet point in style, as it needs to be given the size of the subject and the length of the book..."

James Kelley posted a very complimentary review on the IPMS USA site - slightly gushing it reads as if it has been AI-generated! 

"Night Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe 1940-1943" stands as a valuable contribution to the understanding of aerial warfare during World War II. It is a must-read for aviation enthusiasts, military history buffs, and anyone interested in the human dimension of conflict..."

Reviewing Volume II '1943-45' Scott van Aken writes;

"..I particularly liked the coverage of night fighting on the eastern front, something we rarely read about. For instance, I was quite unaware that the Luftwaffe operated trains that carried the ground radar equipment. In all, it makes a great addition to the series and is a book that I know you will find of interest..."

James Kelley on IPMS USA
Scott van Aken's Modeling Madness review

Kylie Newton on Aeroscale

Luftwaffe blog at the ECPA-D (..again)

Braving the Eurostar and a terrible Parisian heatwave (36C/95F), the Luftwaffe blog recently spent three days at Le Bourget (Paris air show) and (thus far) four days at the ECPA-D in Ivry -sur-Seine. Today (Thursday 26/06) the ECPA-D was closed to visitors for a staff team-building day. I decided to go and see the 'Appel du 18 Juin 1940' exhibition at the National Archives instead and also caught the (relatively) new 'Museum of the liberation of Paris' at Place Denfert Rochereau. Later on I browsed some of the pictures I'd come across at the ECPA-D so far. As usual at Ivry there are new personnel - including a new 'directrice' of the 'Médiathèque'- and new rules and regs. Be aware perhaps that visitors are no longer 'allowed' to retrieve the photo albums directly from the shelves but have to 'request' that they be brought to the reading room. Which is all good if you know that they exist. This is probably what happens most places elsewhere of course, although I've always enjoyed the relaxed attitudes at the ECPA-D. A neat 'find' so far on this trip has been some 'new' von Werra pics from his time in Russia as Kommandeur of I./JG 53 - over three 'DAA' files there is a full 'reportage' showing the ace posing with a downed Rata along with a couple of nice views of his Friedrich being refuelled...

More 'von Werra' on the ECPA-D website here

Lt. Georg-Peter Eder JG 2

Lt. Eder (4th left) with 7. Staffel pilots (JG 2) in January 1943. Uffz. Otto Kleinert is far right. Eder's usual machine was 'white 4'.

Georg-Peter “Schorsch” Eder was born on 8 March 1921 at Oberdachstetten, a town some 50 kms west of Nuremberg. In October 1938 he joined the Luftwaffe. At the beginning of April 1939 he enrolled in the aviation academy at Berlin-Gatow. A year later he he achieved his pilot's license and was sent to training school at Werneuchen. He flew his first combat mission with 1./JG 51 on 1 September 1940 and flew with this unit for the remainder of the Battle of Britain. In May 1941 he joined 4./JG 51 and it was with this Staffel that he shot down his first aircraft, an RAF Spitfire, on 7 May.  Eder downed two Russian aircraft on 22 June 1941, the opening day of Barbarossa. On 24 July 1941, he was shot down and wounded. On 22 August, Eder collided with a Ju 52 transport aircraft on the ground at Ponjatowska in his Bf 109 F-2 (W.Nr. 9184). He was hospitalised with a head injury. He had recorded 10 victories at this time. On recovery from his injuries, Eder was sent as a flight instructor to Jagdfliegerschule 2 based at Zerbst arriving there on 1 November 1941. Eder was transferred to 7./JG 2 based in France in late November 1942..

 "I learnt that I was posted to 7.Staffel of JG 2 in Vannes commanded by my old friend Erich Hohagen. The next morning I 'discovered' the Fw 190 and spent virtually the entire day in the air getting to grips with the controls and exploring its performance. We flew a number of different types of formation exercise, always pushing the aircraft to its limits. 7.Staffel was a unit mostly composed of aces with scores that largely exceeded those of the other Staffeln. It wasn't easy to integrate a group of this quality..." **

On 30 December 40 B-17s raided Lorient. Mayer was airborne from Vannes with three pilots of his Stab " with the firm intention of putting into practise for the first time a tactic that he had been rehearsing for several weeks - the head-on attack to take advantage of the relatively weak defensive fire in the B-17 F.  In February 1943 Eder was appointed Staffelkapitän of a new 12./JG 2. On 28 March he downed a B-17, but his engine was shot up and he was injured when his Bf 109 G-4 (W.Nr. 14 998) somersaulted upon landing at Beaumont. 

According to the caption on the reverse of the image below, Eder's "blaue 1" Bf 109 G-4/R6 WNr.14988 overturned on landing following combat with B-17s. He was helped off the field by his comrades..

With his engine on fire after combat with B-17s Eder was preparing to bail out at 200m when he realised that his chute had been damaged. With his cockpit filling with smoke his 109 flipped over on rolling out of his landing. (note the considerable differences with Crandall's caption in his 'Fighters..' book. The date is incorrect).

 Eder continued to score steadily, downing his 20th victim on 29 May 1943. After claiming a P-47 and  a B-17 Herausschuss on 30 July his scoreboard had reached 31 victories. On 5 September 1943, Eder was named Staffelkapitän of 5./JG 2. He continued to sortie against US bomber formations. On 5 November, Eder was again forced to bail out of his Bf 109 G-6 (W.Nr. 20 733) and was again injured. In March 1944 Oblt. Eder was transferred to 6./JG 1. He baled out of his Fw 190 A-7 (W.Nr. 430 645) “yellow 4” following combat with a USAAF P-47 fighter near Göttingen on 19 April. On 8 May, he downed a B-24 but he was also hit and had to make an emergency landing in Fw 190 A-8 (WNr 170071) “yellow 4” at Vechta. On 29 May, after shooting down a B-17, his Fw 190 A-8 (W.Nr. 730 386) "red 24" collided with a Siebel during landing in Cottbus but Eder escaped unhurt. By the end of May he had a total of 49 confirmed victories. As the Kommandeur of II./JG 1 he saw action over Normandy following the Allied 'invasion'. On 21 June 1944 he recorded his 50th victory and on 24 June received the Ritterkreuz. On 11 August 1944 Eder took command of 6./JG 26. As Allied spearheads closed on the river Seine, Eder's Staffel was sent out on road convoy strafing missions. In an attack on Allied armour near Dreux on 17 August, Eder shot down a Spitfire at low altitude; according to his own account the enemy fighter came down between two M-4 Sherman tanks, destroying them both. A short while later he shot down a second Spitfire, which crashed on a third tank, setting it on fire. He was credited with three Sherman tanks destroyed. On 4 September Eder (now Hptm.) was appointed Kommandeur of II./JG 26, the day after the unit's previous Kommandeur Hptm. Emil Lang (173 victories, RK-EL) was downed by USAAF Thunderbolts over St Trond, Belgium. In September Eder was transfered to Erprobungskommando 262 (later Kommando Nowotny) where he was appointed Staffelkapitän of 1./Kdo Nowotny. On 19 November, Kommando Nowotny became JG 7 and Eder was appointed to lead 9./JG 7 flying the Me 262 jet fighter in combat with considerable success. Some sources claim that during the Ardennes offensive, Eder destroyed some 40 P-47s on the ground! He had been awarded the Eichenlaub (Nr 663) on the 25 November 1944 for 60 victories. On 22 January he was shot down near Parchim by USAAF P-51s and P-38s while preparing to land. He broke both his legs and spent the rest of the war in hospital at Wismar and, later, Bad Weissee where he was captured by US Army troops.  In total he flew 572 combat missions of which 150 were with the Me 262. On the Eastern Front he scored 10 victories and on the Western Front 68, of which  as many as 36 were four-engined bombers. With the Me 262 he scored at least 24 victories (most of these of course were unconfirmed). He was perhaps one of the leading scorers against US bombers, although Eder himself was downed on multiple occasions, bailing out 9 times. He was wounded 14 times.

**('Dans le Ciel de France' Vol 3)

"Eagle Days - Life and death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain" by Victoria Taylor - a review

 

I've got hold of a copy of the book. I certainly didn't want to as I found the publisher's 'hype' rather off-putting and I instinctively knew that I wasn't going to like it. But I'm enjoying it - sort of. But as some have pointed out, the author - Victoria Taylor - is a 'professional' historian. This is not some random re-telling of the Luftschlacht um England. Having been asked to think about the author's 'goal' in writing the book the way she did, I'm starting to understand why she has not used too many post-war accounts from those directly involved and preferred period diaries and letters.

No 'white-washing'.

I was initially rather sceptical of the publisher's claims for this work. But Chapter 18 entitled 'Better liars than flyers' (incidentally, not in quotation marks...) might possibly be described as 'revelatory' . 

You can probably guess what's coming, in fact page 325 is an account of a Luftwaffe pilot roped into a bit of mass-killing. Perhaps shocking to the general reader, although apparently not a new account by any means. The 'problem' here of course is that this has little to do with the Battle of Britain as such..although the author strives hard to show us that it does.

The book according to its author is not about the 'cartoonish' Luftwaffe that we are apparently all familiar with, presumably from the movie 'The Battle of Britain' - which Taylor actually spends a couple of pages psycho-analysing. Briefly put, it would appear that nowadays we all think of the men of the Luftwaffe as being mostly 'honourable opponents' and 'worthy foes' - who suffered and died as did our own brave RAF heroes. This is largely the influence of people like Galland and movies like 'The Battle of Britain'. 

The reality - according to Taylor - is that in some instances the men of the Luftwaffe were hard-bitten Nazis, some of whom relished anti-semitic violence; '..the chivalrous fighter pilots did not cancel out the small pool of ruthless killers who already lurked in all branches of the Luftwaffe by the summer of 1940..' 

Other Luftwaffe men were already disgusted at the treatment meted out to Jews and civilians and not just in Poland. Lehweß-Litzmann  - former Kommodore of KG 3 who went over to the Soviets - flew his first sorties over England during late 1940. The author goes so far as to state that '[..] the German 'knights of the air' should not be detached from the crimes that the regime committed..' The problem here of course is that the Battle of Britain was not the 'ideological' war that characterised the fighting in the East, although according to Taylor it very much was..

So what is Victoria Taylor's goal in compiling this book in the way that she has?  Apparently to 'remind' us that the Luftwaffe crews were not brave 'ordinary men'  - the myth of 'just like us' - but ideologically driven and intent on furthering a tyrannical dictator's ambitions of conquest...

Unfortunately for the reader looking for a 're-telling' of the battle from the German side - which is after all what the title is selling - the author's attempts to drive home this point leads her to wander way off topic in places; from medical experiments on political prisoners to the beginnings of mass murder etc etc. Taylor's book is not an an 'unbiased' account of the Battle of Britain as per the title. The lengthy chapters covering Poland, Noway, France and the campaign in the West don't so much set the stage for the Battle of Britain as ram home what 'nasty' people the German Wehrmacht actually were. They only partly focus on key engagements and do not mention the strengths and weaknesses of the combatants for the period in question. This is a not a 'who shot down who' book. There are lengthy digressions that take in the 'views' of the German media - heavily controlled by the Propaganda Ministry so I'm struggling to understand the value of these - and personal accounts from the home front that have little or no connection to the Battle of Britain. Nowadays the differences between amateur and professional in military history, and in other areas, has blurred, a little perspective is required. Some 'amateurs' have been researching and writing about the Luftwaffe for many years. Taylor - and her publisher - seem wholly unaware of some areas of research and of some of the experienced authors out there in the Luftwaffe enthusiast fraternity. Doubtful if she's ever read Bungay or Vasco or even Goss. As a result her book is far too 'lop-sided'.  At best, 70% of this book pertains to the title, the rest is discourse to prove the point being rather clumsily made. There are no new revelations. And, as another commentator has suggested, regardless of Taylor's credentials, her book could well have been more accurately entitled 'A random essay about the early years of WWII, including brief mentions of the Battle of Britain'. In fact while the publisher would never have gone for it, many of the criticisms about Taylor's work might easily have been deflected with this more 'accurate' title.