Discipline and 'reprimands' - Eintragungen im Strafbuch (1)

 

...The "Strafbuch" was the unit's disciplinary log. While 'punishments' and 'discipline' are occasionally mentioned in memoirs and accounts, information on 'types' of punishment meted out to 'offenders' is much harder to come by - there were for example different types of 'reprimand' ('Verweis') and different 'levels' of arrest; 'room' arrest, 'light' confinement etc.. Of course you could be punished for almost anything in the Luftwaffe; talking out of turn, personal insults and failing to look after equipment and uniform, even before infringements of flying 'discipline' and regulations are considered. 

Below; a 'Straftenor' punishment advice for talking out of turn - damaging the reputation of the war academy - with inapprorpriate remarks in the presence of civilians.

".. I hereby punish Oberleutnant Eickmann with a   - stern reprimand -  for damaging the public reputation of the school when, while acting as duty 'Theateroffizier' on December 23, 1943, he confronted an Oberfahnrich in the presence of civilians and repeatedly referred to this unit as a 'club'...."

 

Fw.Wilhelm Werner, 1./ (F) 100.  Transferred to the penal system today at 13:00 

Zwei Tage gelinder Arrest - 2 days light confinement. As he in March 1943 through carelessness caused the loss of a lined overcoat and a lined work suit. Verschuldet  hat - he was at fault.


" ....out on our isolated field strips, we often took off with a crosswind or even a tailwind, if the wind was not too strong. On one particular occasion I had not noticed that a He 111 was circling overhead and preparing to land. When I landed back in Mariupol at 7.15 p.m. shortly before dusk with S. and O. on board, our chief, Hptm. M., greeted me in a state of utmost agitation. He had been ordered to submit a report to General v. Richthofen against the pilot who had taken off two hours ago across the airfield, having failed to start his run from the laid-out landing cross in accordance with regulations. Richthofen, Chief of Luftflotte 4, was in the He 111 that flew over the airfield when I took off...."

"....For me, this meant a trial by court martial and punishment for offences against aeronautical discipline and order. Richthofen was notorious in such matters, especially among officers. B. had then to carry out the interrogation immediately. I was not unduly worried. Fortunately the wind had been in my favour, because at the time of my take-off there was a light breeze of 15 km/h coming in from the sea, so that technically my take-off was into the wind. The landing cross was therefore in the wrong position, because it had to be moved every time the wind direction changed. But the air traffic control (Flugleitung) had neglected to do this. I was grounded until the trial. After 10 days I was ordered to report to Colonel H.. He told me that Richthofen had personally dropped the charges before the court martial, but that he thought disciplinary action by the disciplinary superior was necessary because I had failed to point out the incorrect position of the landing cross to the air traffic control. H. led me to understand that I had acted correctly, but he could do nothing against the order of the air fleet commander. So I was punished with the lowest level of disciplinary punishment, a simple reprimand. However Richthofen was stubborn - he now demanded a court martial against the unfortunate Flugleiter (flight ops controller), an older Oblt. d.R.. What became of this matter, I never found out..."

" Das Deutsche Volk muss ein Volk von Fliegern werden" - German case endings for readers ( a quick grammar)

Are you like me and really cringe when people write grammatically incorrect words like  "staffels" or "gruppes"? Or when reading the 'Introduction' to Crandall's 'Jagdwaffe' book you come across "expertens" - just how many errors can you get in one German word ?  ( ..at least three here!) Do you groan inwardly when you read English writers writing about Luftwaffe subjects and still treating us to abominations such as 'Geschwaderen' or 'Geschwaders' or other similar 'non-grammatical' forms! Patrick G. Eriksson does it all the way through his 'Alarmstart!' series. Eriksson even atttempts a "Wilden Sau" ('wilds boar' ?!) Osprey author Doug Dildy is another who appears to believe that the plural form of Jagdgeschwader is 'Jagdgeschwaderen'...

The plural form of Geschwader is ..Geschwader - there is no 's' or 'en' or anything else in the plural form, in fact the letter 's' is only very occasionally a plural in German. Most usual plural forms being 'e' or 'en' or just 'n' among others.  To repeat, as just seen, some German nouns have NO plural form. 'Flieger' or 'Jagdflieger' in similar fashion also have no nominative PLURAL form - some case endings do get modified usually according to which PREPOSITION precedes the noun. For more on that see the table below. All nouns are written with a capital letter in German, eg the German for 'ace' is 'Experte' which becomes 'Experten' in the plural. The letter 'n' is the plural form here..

Now go and look at the text in your average Osprey title - even though John Weal (for example) speaks German I reckon his correctors and editors don't. They may however - and this is something that was put to me just recently - be attempting to avoid utilising too many German words in their text - by 'anglicising' them! I don't buy that - a work on German history will inevitably have to feature some German language terms. Besides, surely the reader would like to know that the writer is 'familiar' with the German language. At the very least the writer who can demonstrate this has done more than simply regurgitate secondary sources and will more than probably be able to exploit primary sources, first-person accounts and so on...

A fighter (or Jagd) Geschwader was comprised usually of 3 Gruppen written I./ II./ or III./JG51. Each individual Gruppe was comprised of 3 Staffeln, written 1./ 2./ or 3./ Staffel in ascending numerical order. So 7./JG 51 is the 7th Staffel of that Geschwader and was in III. Gruppe ..
Staffel numbers were colour coded of course for ID purposes ....a fourth Staffel per Gruppe was added from mid-late 1944 along with a fourth Gruppe to each Geschwader. The number '13' (or '1') would usually be the a/c flown by the Staffelkapitän while the Gruppenkommandeur tended to use the double chevron as an ID marking. The CO of a Geschwader was a Kommodore. The Gruppe can be identified by the symbol (or lack of it ) aft of the fuselage cross..


Another example;
Abschuss is one kill - " his 150th Abschuss "
Abschüsse is several kills - " he achieved 150 Abschüsse "

Abschuss is on occasion used interchangeably with Luftsieg (or aerial victory; pl. is Luftsiege) but this is not correct.  The word 'Luftsieg' is a 'propaganda' term rather than an official Luftwaffe term. When a fighter pilot had shot down an e/a he would report this using the word 'Abschuss' in order to make sure that his success had been witnessed by other pilots of his unit so that he had the necessary witness to file his claim. The form he had to submit was titled Abschussmeldung, not Luftsiegmeldung. The term Abschuss accurately describes the fact, whereas the term Luftsieg gives it almost a 'touch of glamour'. Note the term Luftsieg does not appear ( or only to a limited extent) in Jochen Prien's JfV series.

Genitive or dative case plural forms ('n' or 'en') do occasionally throw up some 'curiosities' in German. For example;

  Mit 352 bestätigten Abschüssen ist er der erfolgreichste Jagdflieger - "Mit " (with) is one preposition that always takes the dative case in German and the dative plural ending is '..n'  so in this sentence " with 352 confirmed victories.."  you would write Abschüssen in German but since cases do not exist in English I personally see no reason to write these German words 'incorrectly' in English (if you see what I mean..)

another example follows below;

" Das Deutsche Volk muss ein Volk von Fliegern werden" - Note Flieger has no plural in German - it means 'airman' or 'airmen' 'flyer' or 'flyers'. Here though it follows a preposition 'von' which always takes the 'dative' case - dative case plurals end in 'n', hence 'von Fliegern' ( ..lit ..'of flyers'..).

Note below; the 'nominative' and 'accusative' plural of 'der/den Flieger' is 'die Flieger' - only the 'dative' and gentive case endings are modified (Gentive ..des Fliegers, 'of the airman' - singular. Not modified in the plural form)

A few operational or flying terms;

Einsatz is an operational mission - the plural form here is Einsätze, in other words the ä+e

Feindflug (lit. enemy flight) denoted a flight over enemy-held territory or a flight in which the enemy was encountered and combat joined if over German-held territory. Also known as a Frontflug. 

The Frontflugspange was the (operational) 'missions clasp'  awarded to frontline pilots with a certain number of sorties under their belts. Contact with the enemy was termed Feindberührung  - the title of Jules Meimberg's autobiography as it happens.