.. a partial listing of just some of the units transferred to and/or already operating on the 'Eastern Front' in late January 1945 included the three Gruppen of JG 77...
Below; Uffz. Alfred Nitsch - former recce pilot and instructor - in the cockpit of his 12./JG 77 'blue 3' at Neuruppin, late October 1944. The aircraft is K-4 WNr. 330177 which was lost during the Ardennes campaign on 23 December at Houverath with Fw. Hans Rossner at the controls. Note the 'Deutsche Luftwaffe' armband over Nitsch's flying suit, worn to identify the wearer as a Luftwaffe pilot to German civilians. The antenna mast is visible on the folding hood section, a feature of an early series machine. Previously published on the cover of 'Avions' magazine No. 243 - the first part of an extensive three-part feature on the Bf 109 K-4 in combat. (This issue was 'notable' in the long history of 'Avions' magazine for the being the first to feature the same aircraft type on consecutive magazine covers, in this instance a Bf 109 K-4 of III./JG 77).
The last fortnight of 1944 operating over the Ardennes and western Germany were some of the hardest days yet endured by the men of JG 77 - there was hardly a single sortie flown that was not marked by heavy losses. In total that short period saw 26 pilots killed, 13 seriously injured and one taken captive and around 80 Messerschmitts lost! No fewer than 26 of these were III. Gruppe Bf 109 K-4s. Among the losses were the Gruppenkommandeur of I./JG 77 Hptm. Lothar Baumann, the Staffelkapitän of 2./JG 77 Oblt. Iring Englisch (replaced by Lt. Ulrich Peiper), and 133-victory ace and Geschwaderkommodore Maj. Johannes Wiese. Ordered up by Galland on the morning of 25 December, and heading north-west over the Ruhr at 8,700m, Wiese and what was left of his Stabsschwarm (Fw. Hansch) failed to rendezvous with I./JG 77 over Duisberg and found themselves caught up with 401 Sqd Spitfires over Euskirchen;
" ...Flying at about 8700 m over Duisberg, I saw the Rhine in front of me and a little behind me - flying from west to east - enemy fighters. After a brief wing waggle, I immediately made a steep turn to the left towards their formation and, as I started the attack, I recognised further aircraft, now clearly identified as Spitfires, above, below and beside me. In the course of the ensuing sharp turn, I had difficulty jettisoning my drop tank. Behind me I saw a machine burning brightly. This was probably Fw. Hansch's aircraft. Despite all my evasive manoeuvres I came under repeated attack from all sides, received hits in the engine, a hit in the cabin and felt several impacts in the fuselage and tail. I had thrown the machine into such wild manoeuvres that it was now out of control. With the cockpit icing up and the engine smoking and losing power, I decided to parachute clear.."
Hansch had been quickly shot down and killed. Wiese bailed out but his chute failed to correctly deploy and the Kommodore was badly injured in the heavy landing.. On 31 December one of the last 'veterans' of 11./JG 77, Fw Karl-Heinz Böttner, led a recce Rotte in the direction of Münster. Both Böttner (Bf 109 K-4 'yellow 2', injured) and his wingman Lt. Gerhard Eck (Bf 109 K-4 'yellow 12', killed) were shot down by Spitfires..
On 1 January JG 77 flew the Bodenplatte mission against Allied air bases in Belgium (mostly) - JG 77 took part in a futile 'raid' on the airfield at Deurne (Antwerp). Kapitän of 11./JG 77 and leading III. Gruppe on the operation against Deurne in his Bf 109 K-4 "yellow 10", ace 'Heinz' Hackler was hit by anti-aircraft fire and failed to return. Johann Twietmeyer at the controls of his K-4 'red 7' was hit by ground-fire while strafing an American road column during the raid. He made a forced landing in a field (Rosendaal) and escaped unhurt. Although ‘Bodenplatte’ was an abject failure for JG 77, taken as a whole the operation nevertheless put a brake on Allied air attacks in the early days of 1945. JG 77 took advantage of the situation to organise ferry flights of Bf 109s from factories. On 2 January, two I./JG 77 pilots were killed during these delivery flights. At the end of the first week of January, support operations over the Ardennes resumed. By this time, the German offensive in the Ardennes was in its final days.
14 January 1945 saw major battles in the air over the south-eastern corner of Germany. I. and II./JG 77 operated primarily to counter Allied ‘Jabos’ around Bastogne and St. Vith. While I./JG 77 suffered two fatalities over Münster/Düsseldorf, II./JG 77 had six killed and four wounded including Uffz. Fritz Giere who was forced to bail out of his G-10 in the region of Hamm (presumably Hamm am Rhein, a municipality south of Darmstadt). According to the loss listing Giere was shot up under his chute and came down in the Rhine and drowned. A Spitfire and a Beaufighter were claimed by II./JG 77.
On 15 January I./JG 77 received orders to transfer to the East, under new Kommodore Maj. Erich Leie - previously Kommandeur of I./JG 2 and high-scoring ace with JG 51 in the East (117 claims by October 1944). Below; part of a photo-set to mark the award of Leie's RK (21 victories) taken on August 1, 1941.
The stragglers reached Ohlau on 18 January (today Olawa in south-west Poland) some 25 kms south-east of Breslau (Wroclaw). Recently appointed Kommandeur of I./JG 77 was 15-victory ace and former Staffelkapitän of 6./JG 77, Hptm. Joachim Deicke. Kommandeur of II./JG 77 was Maj. Siegfried Freytag and III. Gruppe was led by Hptm. Armin Köhler. As with all the other fighter Geschwader hurriedly transferred to the East, the three Gruppen would be tasked with Straßenjagd - strafing road columns. (according to Lft 6 figures over 4,000 sorties were flown by fighter Gruppen in the East during January 1945 - for just 134 victories, which suggests that either combat was avoided or the Soviets were not flying much in the poor weather or both. Either way, not an indicator of 'air superiority'. See Prien JG 77 Teil 4, p2280 )
The last JG 77 pilot lost in the West during January was Gefr. Hans Körner who was killed in the crash of his G-14 'blue 9' on 24 January near Gütersloh (Verl) during the transfer flight.(shot down according to one source)
The situation on the 'Eastern Front' was catastrophic. The pilots of JG 77 flew several sorties per day, with the futile aim of slowing the Soviet advance. Casualties, mainly due to the Red Army's solid anti-aircraft fire, were severe and the incomplete official lists for this period give only a small idea of the scale of the losses. Nevertheless, although the Soviet air force enjoyed numerical superiority equal to that of the Western Allies, a handful of German aces continued to add to their scoreboards - undoubtedly due to the fact that the Soviet Boston and Pe-2 medium bombers were, for example, less ‘sophisticated’ than the B-24s and B-17s of the US bomber formations and the Soviet pilots less well trained (even if they were more of a handful than those encountered during ‘Barbarossa’).
On 30 January, Lt Walter Wildenauer (11./JG 77), who had already been shot down and wounded on 23 December, disappeared during the strafing of an anti-aircraft position in the Ratibor region. Lt Gerhard Staroste, a veteran of 2./JG 77, was wounded. The next day, Fw Gerd Lenke (3./JG 77) disappeared south-west of Gleiwitz (now Gliwice); the same fate befell Uffz Walter Wawoczny (12./JG 77) and three pilots from II/JG 77. The losses were not only the result of enemy action. On 31 January, Uffz. Gerhard Letzbor (8./JG 77) took off from Beneschau. The three Staffeln were set up in a triangle at the edge of the runway. In the event of the entire Gruppe being ordered up they were supposed to taxi out in turn. The signal was given too early for 6./JG 77, who started up the engines of their Bf 109s and began to move out onto the strip. Meanwhile the hapless 8. Staffel pilot had only just lined up at the threshold. Moments later Letzbor's G-10 ploughed into another Bf 109 in the middle of the runway. (Zusammenstoß Start) The injured pilot was evacuated to a hospital in Prague, where he was later captured by Soviet troops.
By late January I./JG 77 was split between Beneschau and Prerau. II./JG 77 was in Beneschau (today Benešov, a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic). III./JG 77 was in Proßnitz, some 200 kilometres east of Prague.
According to Uffz Bartholomäi (8./JG 77) the mood among some JG 77 pilots was relatively upbeat, despite the atmosphere of defeat, fear and gloom;
'..contacts with the Czech people were excellent. I stayed with locals in Buslawitz, near our Beneschau airfield. Food and drink were plentiful. Although it may seem surprising at the moment, our morale was high, as was our spirit of comradeship. We continued to believe in final victory against all odds. I did relatively little ground strafing, most of our missions were free hunting and escorting bombers or fighter-bombers (including Rudel's unit). In our spare time, we played cards, listened to music or wrote letters to our families '.
Even so, Bartholomäi was shot down three times in the East. He had to parachute once and made one belly-landing at Beneschau, getting clear of his Bf 109 just before it exploded.
Also on this blog;
As usual, thanks to Jochen Prien and team for presenting all the data featured in posts like these in their Jagdfliegerverbände series, most notably here in JfV 13/VI 'Einsatz in der Reichsverteidigung und im Westen' and the forthcoming Teil 16/I 'Einsatz an allen Fronten', the first of two volumes to cover 1945. The JfV series is available directly from the publisher at jagdgeschwader.net