Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (32 page)

Second Air Corps could not have achieved these successes had it not been for the efforts of Col. Werner Moelders, the commander of the 51st Fighter Wing and one of the greatest genuine heroes in the history of aerial warfare. “Wherever he showed himself,” Guderian wrote later. “The air was soon clear.”
⁵⁵
On September 8, JG 51 reported its 2,001st aerial “kill” of the war. On the eastern front alone its pilots had shot down 1,357 Soviet aircraft and destroyed 298 more on the ground. It had also destroyed 142 tanks and armored cars, 16 guns, 35 trains. and 432 trucks.
⁵⁶

Young Moelders was nearing the zenith of his remarkable career. He had been born in Gelsenkirchen on March 18, 1913. His father, a school teacher, had been killed in the Argonne in World War I. Despite this fact (or perhaps because of it), Werner was set on a military career from childhood. He entered the Dresden Cadet Academy in 1932 and was commissioned second lieutenant in the 2nd Infantry Regiment in 1934. Later that year he applied for duty in the clandestine Luftwaffe. He initially failed his flight physical because he got sick and threw up during the spin-chair test. The determined and intense Moelders practiced the test continuously until he mastered it, but he continued to suffer from air sickness until months after he graduated from Alfred Keller’s bomber school at Brunswick. In the meanwhile he was posted to the Immelmann Wing (later StG 2) in Schwerin, where he became a Stuka pilot. After participating in the occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, he transferred to Osterkamp’s 1st Fighter Wing as a squadron leader. In April, 1938, he assumed command of a fighter squadron in the Condor Legion in Spain.

Mild-mannered and sensitive, this devout Catholic did not seem like the kind of man who would revolutionize fighter tactics forever, but he did (see Chapter
3
). In the process he became the leading ace in the Spanish Civil War and the model all fighter pilots looked up to. Promoted to captain during the Iberian conflict, he became an inspector of fighter units at RLM and became commander of III Group, 53rd Fighter Wing, on the western front in 1939.

Moelders shot down his first Allied airplane on September 20, 1939, and soon distinguished himself both as a leader and an aviator. He was the first pilot of World War II to score twenty victories and the first pilot in history to score 100 victories. During his career he was shot down and captured by the French. He was wounded in the knee during the Battle of Britain and forced to crash-land in France as a result.

Promoted to major on July 19, 1940, and lieutenant colonel on October 27, 1940, he led the 51st Fighter Wing in the latter part of the Battle of Britain. He had sixty-eight kills when he led his Geschwader across the Soviet frontier on June 22, 1941.

Wemer Moelders was a great wing commander. Because he had had problems in his early flying career, he understood the problems of his younger pilots and helped them master their airplanes and bring out the best of their abilities. In return, they idolized him and nicknamed him “Father,” despite his youth. Hitler, Goering, and the entire Luftwaffe hierarchy held him in the highest esteem. Everyone respected him—even the enemy. He was promoted to colonel in 1941 and was awarded the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, a decoration roughly equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Shortly after Moelders scored his 115th victory, Goering made him the first
General der Jagdwaffe
—general of fighter forces. He had become the youngest general in the Wehrmacht, but his Berlin desk was seldom occupied. Moelders was busy on the eastern front, directing fighters and Stukas in the Crimea. In November 1941, he was summoned back to the capital to join the Honor Guard at Ernst Udet’s funeral.

General Moelders was in a hurry to get back to Berlin, not only to attend the funeral but also to obtain more fuel, ammunition, and repair parts for his depleted squadrons. On November 11, 1941, he boarded a He-111 bomber and, despite bad weather and the objections of his pilot, Moelders insisted that they proceed at once to Berlin. Near Breslau, one of their engines failed. Moelders then ordered the pilot to land at Schmeidefeld on the edge of the city. As the plane made its final approach, the second engine quit and the He-111 smashed into the ground. Moelders, who was sitting in the copilot’s seat, died instantly of a broken neck. The pilot, Lieutenant Knobe, a veteran of the Condor Legion, died on the way to the hospital, and the head mechanic was also killed. Moelders’ aide and the radio operator survived.
⁵⁷

Werner Moelders was described by a colleague as being a man whose “happy disposition, an incomparable charm, and the urge to get the best out of life made it impossible to dislike him. He was a real person with a warm heart, talented, and with a natural sense of humor.”
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He was also known for standing up to the Nazi party, especially when it attacked the Catholic Church and her institutions.

The entire nation mourned the dashing young aviator and his old wing was designated JG 51 “Moelders” in his honor. Even after the war the Germans fondly remembered their hero. In 1969 the West German Air Force named a missile-firing destroyer in his honor.
⁵⁹
He was succeeded as general of fighter forces by Adolf Galland, the commander of JG 26.

Meanwhile, on September 10, Ewald von Kleist began his advance east of Kiev, in an attempt to encircle the city. He experienced considerably less resistance than did Guderian. The two linked up at Romny, 124 miles east of Kiev, on September 14. Kiev fell to Field Marshal von Reichenau’s Sixth Army on the 18th, and by September 26 the greatest battle of annihilation of the war was over. Stalin had lost 665,000 men, 3,718 guns, and 884 tanks captured.

Elsewhere on the eastern front, Keller’s reinforced 1st Air Fleet supported Army Group North’s drive on Leningrad. The Red Air Force was already beginning to recover and continued to commit fresh units to the battle. By August 23, Foerster’s I Air Corps alone had shot down 920 Soviet aircraft.

Meanwhile, two days before the mopping up operations at Minsk were completed, VIII Air Corps left the central sector of the Russian front and flew north, where it joined 1st Air Fleet. While it was in the northern sector, VIII Air Corps spent most of its time supporting Col. Gen. Erich Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group, which cut its way to the outskirts of Leningrad despite heavy resistance.
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Richthofen bombed Leningrad and set it on fire “from one end to the other.”
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In mid-September he attacked the Soviet Baltic Fleet, at anchor at Leningrad, and the nearby ports at Oranienbaum and Kronstadt. Kronstadt, an island in the Gulf of Finland twelve and a half miles from Leningrad, was the largest war harbor in the Soviet Union.
⁶²
The Baltic Fleet included two battleships, two cruisers, thirteen destroyers, forty-two submarines, and more than two hundred auxiliary vessels.
⁶³
It was subjected to attack after attack by the Ju-87s. Unlike the British Mediterranean Fleet in Cretan waters, however, the Baltic Fleet was closely guarded by hundreds of antiaircraft guns and protected by numerous squadrons of Red Air Force fighters (Rata and Curtiss aircraft). The Stukas, therefore, had to be closely protected by the Messerschmitt fighters, as indeed they were.

On September 16, 1st Lt. Hans Ulrich Rudel of StG 2 flew his dive-bomber through heavy weather, dove through the clouds to an altitude of 2,400 feet, and dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on the deck of the battleship
Marat
, the pride of the Baltic Fleet. Flak was very heavy, of course, so Rudel ducked back into the clouds as quickly as he could. The
Marat
was severely damaged, but a 1,000-pound bomb could not sink it. Later that week, however, Rudel had another opportunity to attack the
Marat
, this time with a 2,000-pound bomb. He dove straight down from 9,000 feet and released his bomb at the dangerously low altitude of 900 feet. It hit the battleship’s ammunition magazine. The
Marat
exploded and split in two. Rudel managed to pull up from his dive just above the surface of the Gulf of Finland, where he was instantly attacked by a Rata, but a protecting Messerschmitt shot it down, and the lieutenant made good his escape. Richthofen personally decorated Rudel with the Knight’s Cross for this feat.
⁶⁴

The sinking of this 23,500-ton battleship was the first major success for the twenty-four-year-old Rudel, who became the most highly decorated pilot of the war. The son of a Lutheran pastor in Silesia, Rudel was a delicate youth who had been afraid of his own shadow. His mother had to hold his hand in thunderstorms until he was twelve and his older sister once said, “Uli will never be any good in life; he is afraid of going into the cellar by himself.” This frightened child grew up to terrorize the Soviet army and be the most successful pilot in the history of the Luftwaffe. He was commissioned on April 20, 1938, and served as a long-range reconnaissance pilot in Poland. Assigned to a Stuka wing during the Balkans campaign, he was not allowed to fly combat missions in Yugoslavia, Greece, or Crete because of his alleged inability to manage his aircraft. Given his chance in Russia, he flew 2,530 combat missions on the eastern front and destroyed 519 enemy tanks—enough to equip an entire armored corps. Wounded five times, Rudel continued to fly despite the loss of his right leg below the knee. He was promoted very rapidly and became a colonel on January l, 1945, at the age of twenty-eight. Near the end of the war, Adolf Hitler decorated Rudel with the Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds—a medal the Fuehrer created just for him. After the war Rudel emigrated to Argentina, where he worked for an aircraft firm.
⁶⁵

Besides sinking the
Marat
, Richthofen’s dive-bombers also sank the heavy cruiser
Kirov
and several other vessels and generally wrecked the Russian Baltic Fleet in September, 1941.
⁶⁶
On the ground, VIII Air Corps helped Eighteenth Army breach the fortifications at Luga and supported its advance on Novgorod. As the Germans came closer and closer to Leningrad, Soviet resistance intensified, and progress became slower. The VIII Air Corps very effectively supported 4th Panzer Group’s breakthrough past the outer fortifications of Leningrad on August 11 and its subsequent advance to seal off the city.
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On September 8, XLI Panzer Corps of the 4th Panzer Group, supported by Richthofen’s divebombers, began its drive through the Duderhof Hills near Leningrad against fierce resistance. The panzer corps’ right flank was exposed to strong Russian counterattacks that inflicted heavy losses on the 6th Panzer Division, despite constant interdiction sorties by VIII Air Corps. Finally. however, the XLI Panzer battered its way to Hill 167, the “Generals Hill” of the Czars. It fell on September 11. At 11:30
A
.
M
. that day, Second Lieutenant Darius, the commander of the spearhead, signaled: “can see St. Petersburg and the sea!” Leningrad was only six miles away and had been cut off from the east.
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Hitler, however, commanded that the city not be taken. He ordered it be surrounded and starved into submission that winter. This was a fatal mistake on his part, because the Russians managed to supply it over the ice of Lake Lagoda. As a result of this order, Leningrad never did fall, although it remained under siege until January 1944, tying down two German armies and the entire 1st Air Fleet in the process. On September 17, 1941, 4th Panzer Group and VIII Air Corps were withdrawn from Army Group North and sent southeast, toward Moscow.