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 - Victoria Taylor

 

I've got hold of a copy of the book. I'm enjoying it. 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 mas-killing. Perhaps shocking to the general reader, although not a new account by any means - and little to do with the Battle of Britain as such..

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 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..'

Victoria Taylor's goal? 

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. There are lengthy digressions that take in the 'views' of the German media - heavily controlled by the Propaganda Ministry so of little value - and personal accounts from the home front that have little or no connection to the Battle of Britain. In a period of time where the difference between amateur and professional in military history, and in other areas, has blurred, a little perspective is required. Taylor's book is far too 'lop-sided'. There are no new revelations. At best, 70% of this book pertains to the title, the rest is discourse to prove the point being rather clumsily made. 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'.