Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (50 page)

Note: the 19th and 20th Motorized Flak Divisions had been destroyed in North Africa in 1943.

Source: Mitcham 1985, p. 519.

Goering, as usual, did not blame himself for the disasters, but rather the “cowardice” of his fighter pilots, a statement no Allied bomber crewman would agree with. He also made the very serious mistake of trying to counter terror with terror, emphasizing German bomber production at the expense of fighter production. As a result, he was unable to defend against the next onslaught—one of the most powerful of the war.

The Battle of Hamburg began on the night of July 24, when 700 heavy R.A.F. bombers attacked the city, after other British aircraft released millions of strips of metal foil, totally neutralizing German radar. Only a dozen bombers were shot down as much of the city was destroyed and 1,500 civilians were killed. Over a hundred U.S. precision bombers appeared the next day, increasing the damage and hampering fire-fighting efforts. (The American contribution to the strategic bombing effort, though not to be minimized, did not rival the British air effort until 1944 and did not exceed it until the last quarter of that year; it never overshadowed it.)

The really devastating raid did not come until the night of the twenty-seventh, when 772 British bombers dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on the city. About half of these were incendiaries, half high explosives. The Hamburg Fire Department was already low on water from the previous two days, as north-central Germany was in the grips of a drought. The massive raid of the twenty-seventh killed many fire fighters and ruptured water mains. The heat was so intense that artificial firestorms were created. “The air brought in from the areas surrounding the major fires attained cyclonic force,” Beck wrote later. “Ground-level Hamburg became the fire pan of a gigantic oven.” Smoke rose to observable heights of four to five miles and many fire department units simply gave up fighting the uncontrollable blazes, concentrating on extricating trapped survivors instead.
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Tens of thousands perished in the heat and hundreds of thousands fled the city in terror. Even the asphalt on the streets caught fire.

Two nights later the R.A.F. repeated the performance, dropping more than 2,000 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs. That night the Luftwaffe shot down only twenty-eight bombers as Germany’s second largest city died. The last raid, of only slightly less intensity, took place on August 2. In the four night raids of July 24–August 2, Hamburg suffered as much destruction as Britain endured throughout the entire war. The death total could only be estimated, but 50,000 is a commonly cited figure. Another 40,000 people were wounded. Half of the city’s factories were destroyed and more than 50 percent of Hamburg’s houses were destroyed by explosion or fire. More than a million homeless refugees fled into the interior, spreading fear and terror as they went. German war morale sagged for the first time. Munitions Minister Albert Speer predicted to Hitler that six more raids of this nature would end the war.
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Fortunately for Germany, the Allies did not concentrate such air power against a single city until 1945, when they firebombed Dresden.

Goering did not dare show his face in Hamburg after the raid. He merely sent a letter of condolence to Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann and the population. It was never published because it would have caused a riot.
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The enormous quantities of tin foil the R.A.F. dropped during the Battle of Hamburg effectively neutralized Kammhuber’s Himmelbett system, which depended on radar to direct the fighters to their targets. Too inflexible and too dependent on ground direction, it was replaced by the “Wild Boar” (
Wilde Sau
) tactics invented by Maj. Hans-Joachim “Hajo” Hermann.

The brilliantly innovative Major Hermann had been born in Kiel on August 1, 1913, and had begun his combat career with the 4th Bomber Wing. Exceptionally successful in attacking British shipping during the war, he sank a dozen British vessels totalling about seventy thousand tons and was awarded the Knights Cross in 1940. Commander of III Group, 30th Bomber Wing, he transferred to the night fighters and organized the new 300th Fighter Wing, an experimental unit near Bonn, in mid-1942.
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Although Hermann was to personally shoot down nine U.S. bombers in the next two years, his main claim to fame lay in his endless innovations, of which the Wild Boar tactics were the most famous. They were based on the idea that the Allied night bombers could be silhouetted by lighting target areas with flares, searchlights, and flak. Then freelance, single-engine fighters flying at high altitudes could attack the bombers from overhead, using visual sighting exclusively. The tactics were so successful that two more Wild Boar wings—JG 301 and JG 302—were organized near Munich and Berlin, respectively. All three were controlled by the newly formed 30th Fighter Division, led by Major Hermann.
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These tactics were soon adopted by the entire night fighter branch.

General Kammhuber was not at all in favor of the new tactics, but Colonel General Weise fully supported them, and he was backed by Hermann Goering. Kammhuber’s stock at RLM was already low, because he had been pushing for a new model aircraft, specially designed for night fighting. In this he was opposed by Milch, who did not want to expend the raw materials or industrial workforce hours necessary to bring it into production. These factors combined eventually led to Kammhuber’s removal as general of night fighters.
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“Hajo” Hermann was eventually promoted to colonel and in December, 1943, was named inspector of aerial defense (
Luftverteidigung
). He was commander of the 9th Air Division in 1944 and, at the end of the war, was leader of Ram Command Elbe (
Rammkommando Elbe
), the German equivalent of the kamikaze pilots. Captured by the Russians in 1945, he spent the next decade in Soviet prisons.

Although more successful than the Himmelbett system, the Wild Boar tactics did not halt the R.A.F. bomber offensive. The “Battle of Berlin” began on July 24, 1943. During the first phase, which lasted until November 18, the Anglo-Americans launched thirty-three major raids. They concentrated against the capital city of the Reich, of course, but they also attacked Bochum, Duisburg, Gelsenkirchen, Wuppertal, Leverkusen, Essen, Duesseldorf, and Remscheild in the Ruhr, struck Hanover in more than 3,000 sorties, and hit Bremen, Kassel, Cologne, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Munich, and Nurem berg with major aerial bombardments. Targets in France were also subjected to precision bombing, and Milan, Turin, and Genoa in Italy were victims of minor raids by the Fifteenth U.S. Air Force.
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The first major raid hit Berlin on August 1. Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels, who had neglected building air raid shelters, was at least wise enough to order the evacuation of children and nonessential personnel, and he constantly visited devastated sections of the city, keeping morale as high as was possible under the circumstances. Berlin, though largely reduced to ruins, was no repetition of Hamburg, even though 3,000 civilians died in the first two raids.
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Meanwhile, the Ninth U.S. Air Force joined the European air war. Operating from bases in North Africa, it attacked the Ploesti oilfields on August 1, with little success. Of the 178 B-24 “Liberators” involved, 50 were shot down and 55 others were seriously damaged by I/JG 4, IV/JG 27, and the Bulgarian Fighter Regiment, operating out of Rumania, Greece, and Bulgaria, respectively. On August 13 it was more successful, raiding the Messerschmitt Aircraft Works at Wiener Neustadt, near Vienna. Since there were no fighter defenses in Austria, the Luftwaffe was forced to create Fighter Command Austria (
Jafu Ostmark
) to counter the new threat—a further drain on the fighter arm. Then, on August 16, the Americans inaugurated shuttle bombing. Dozens of Flying Fortresses took off from England, bombed the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg, and flew on to the American bases in North Africa before the Luftwaffe could react.
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On the night of August 17, the British turned their attentions to Peenemunde, the center of German V-weapons research activities. Forty of the 597 heavy bombers which attacked the facility were shot down, but 700 workers were killed, including many almost irreplaceable technicians. Professor Thiel, the rocket propulsion expert, and Chief Project Engineer Walther were among the dead.
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After the Hamburg raid, Goering met with Milch, Weise, Galland, and many other officers of the Luftwaffe General Staff. Even Col. Dietrich Peltz, the inspector of bomber forces, agreed that the bomber arm should at once relinquish its industrial priority so that Germany could produce more fighters. “Never before and never again did I witness such determination and agreement among the circle of those responsible for the leadership of the Luftwaffe,” Galland recalled.
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Personal animosity and ambition were put aside; everyone wanted to do everything possible to prevent a second national catastrophe of the scale of Hamburg. Even Goering was carried away. He rushed off to Fuehrer Headquarters to secure Hitler’s permission for the Luftwaffe to give top priority to the defense of the Reich. Fighter production, he told the Fuehrer, must be emphasized, even at the expense of bomber production. There were apparently no surviving witnesses to the scene that followed in the Fuehrer’s bunker, but Goering emerged sobbing. Hitler had rejected any radical changes in the air war; there would be no changeover from offensive to defensive tactics. Terror bombing against England would still be the answer to terror bombing against Germany; furthermore, Hitler said he had lost faith in the Reichsmarschall and the Luftwaffe. Completely shattered, Goering begged for another chance. Hitler consented. “The Fuehrer made me realize our mistake,” he moaned to Galland and Peltz. “The Fuehrer is always right. We must deal such mighty blows to our enemy in the West that he will never dare to risk another raid like Hamburg . . .” Goering ordered Peltz to direct the aerial counterattack on England and hurried back to Rominten, East Prussia, to hunt.
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The air war would take its inevitable course down the road to total defeat. If Hermann Goering could not see this (or refused to see it), Hans Jeschonnek finally saw it clearly. As a result, he took what he considered to be the appropriate step: he shot himself in the head.

Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe Col. Gen. Hans Jeschonnek was a child of his times and a victim of them. His youth had been ended by the First World War and much of his home province of Prussia had been gobbled up by the Poles under the Treaty of Versailles. After serving in a weak and restricted army for fourteen years, Lieutenant Jeschonnek was delighted to see Hitler come to power and begin to make Germany strong again. He was also pleased to be able to play a prominent role in this expansion. Unfortunately, he believed in Hitler totally. The Fuehrer had said that war would not come until 1942; all right, Jeschonnek thought, the war would not come until 1942. When the conflict broke out in 1939 instead, Jeschonnek knew that the Luftwaffe did not have the depth to fight a long war, especially on two fronts. But the Fuehrer assured him that it would be a short war. Jeschonnek’s response was predictable: “Training units to the front!” We have seen the results.

Jeschonnek was a soldier and airman to his toes. Unlike Goering and many others, Jeschonnek had none of the plunderer in him. He never took anything from occupied countries. Indeed, his life-style has been characterized as Spartan. Possessing a strong intellect, he wrote memoranda which were often adopted into training manuals without modification, since there was nothing to change. And incidents such as this occurred years before he became chief of the Air General Staff. The problem was Jeschonnek was too much the soldier. His family (he had a wife and a daughter) did not play any decisive role in his life, and religion was even less important to him. Religion, to Jeschonnek, was “merely a silly and superficial social matter,” in which he took no interest. “Thus,” wrote Suchenwirth, “when the turning point of the war came to shatter his deepest confidence . . . Jeschonnek had absolutely no spiritual reserves upon which he could call.” Basically he was a lonely, isolated man who could not open his heart to anyone.
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