Stuka Pilot (27 page)

^{P 51 Mustang}

The gliding in to land was nervous work, for this is the moment when your aircraft is absolutely defenseless and there is nothing you can do but wait patiently until you come to a stop. Hofmeister has evidently not come down as quickly as I have; I have lost sight of him. I am still taxiing in at speed when looking out I see the Mustangs coming in for the attack and one of them heading straight for my aircraft. I hurriedly throw up the cockpit hood—I must still be moving at about 30 m.p.h.—climb out onto the wing and drop off onto the ground, and lie there flat, a few seconds before the Mustang’s cannon begin to bark. My aircraft which has taxied on by herself for quite a distance catches fire in the first attack. I am glad I am no longer in her.

We have no flak on the airfield, because no one had anticipated or been prepared for our withdrawal to the Hungarian airfields. Our material is unfortunately so reduced that “all the airfields of Europe” cannot be provided with A.A. defense at the drop of a hat. Our enemies who have unlimited material at their disposal can site flak batteries at every street comer, we unhappily cannot. The Mustangs have dispersed over the whole airfield and are having some peacetime target practice. My squadron which should have refueled and reloaded during my absence is still on the ground. A number of transport planes which have brought up ammunition, petrol and bombs stand exposed in the open. Serviceable aircraft are in improvised hangers in the forest and are difficult to hit. But aircraft under repair and transport planes with bombs and petrol fly up into the air; the forty Mustangs’ cannon keeps up an unbroken tattoo as they shoot everything they see in flames. A helpless fury takes possession of me at having to look on without being able to hit back; all round the airfield, mushrooms of black smoke where isolated aircraft are on fire. In this pandemonium one might think the end of the world has come. Absurd as it must sound, I try to snatch a wink of sleep; by the time I wake up it will all be over. If the chap who keeps on coming at me happens to hit me, it will be easier to take if I am asleep.

After the Mustang pilot set fire to my aircraft in the first attack he must have spotted me lying to the side of her path. Perhaps he actually saw me drop off as he flew in; at any rate he comes back at me again and again with his cannon and machine guns. Apparently he cannot see clearly through the window behind which his sights are and through which he must aim; he probably cannot believe after every fly-in that he has not hit me, for after coming in once or twice he roars over me obliquely, dipping his aircraft, at 12-15 feet and takes a look at me. I lie flat on my stomach all the time hugging the pock-marked grass; I have not budged except to turn my head slightly to one side so as to squint at him through my lowered eyelids. Every time he comes in at me from in front earth and sand from his bullets bespatter me right and left. Will he hit me the next time? To run for it is out of the question, for everything moving is instantly fired on. So it goes on for what seems to me an eternity. Now I feel sure that he has run out of ammunition, for after skimming once more obliquely over me he flies off. His colleagues have also used up their ammunition; very profitably, it must be admitted. They reassemble above the airfield and fly away.

Our airfield looks a terrible mess, especially at first sight. The first thing I do is to look for Plt./Off. Hofmeister. His aircraft is lying on the perimeter of the field; he must have been slower in landing and was caught on the way down. He is wounded; one foot has to be amputated. Fifty aircraft are burning and exploding on the airfield, luckily only a few of my serviceable planes which, well covered as they were, were not an easy target. Now I am told when visiting each unit in the forest that during the attack the ground personnel kept up an uninterrupted small arms fire, as ordered, with MP-40s, rifles, machine guns and revolvers. Four Mustangs lie near the airfield. Seeing that we had no flak this is a gratifying achievement. The Mustangs have not had their safe target practice so gratuitously after all. A few days later A.A. batteries arrive for my airfield and raids as successful as this one are not likely to be repeated.

German aircraft types often appear in our area flown by Rumanians whom we have equipped with them. They now bear the Rumanian markings and are flying on the Russian side. The Rumanian operational base is not very far from us. We therefore spend two days making low level attacks on their airfields in the area Karlsburg, Kronstadt and Hermannstadt. Malicious tongues among us suggest that we are trying to emulate the Mustangs; they would have done it before. We destroy more than 150 aircraft on the ground, some of them in the air; in any case they are mostly training and courier planes, but even so are of use for training the Rumanian air force. Success in attacks of this kind is to a very great extent dependent on the strength of the enemy defense.

The fighting in Rumania is at an end. The Soviet floods pour in over the whole country to try to force a passage into Hungary at every possible point. Tightly packed convoys are at this moment streaming through the Roter-Turm Pass in the direction of Hermannstadt.

Sorties against this invading spearhead are particularly difficult because this army is very strongly defended against air attack. On one flight over the northern end of the pass 4 cm. flak rips off the cockpit hood of my FW 190 and I find myself suddenly sitting in the open. Luckily none of the splinters wounds me.

The same evening my intelligence officer tells me that he listens almost every day to the radio propaganda broadcasts in German, atrocity-stories about German soldiers and incitement of the guerillas. The broadcaster always begins: Kronstadt calling. After communicating with the group the first attack on this radio station is fixed for tomorrow; it must be possible to deal with these provocateurs. At day-break we set course for Kronstadt, an old settlement of the Transylvanian Saxons. The town shimmers straight ahead in the morning mist under the first rays of the sun. We do not need to fly over it; the transmitting station with its two tall masts stands on a main road about five miles northeast. Between the high masts is a little building, the nerve centre of the whole transmitting organism. As I fly in, preparatory to going into a dive, I see a motor car drive out of the courtyard of the building. If I could be sure its passengers were the men who are instigating the partisans to stab us in the back it would be worth a little extra effort to catch them. The car disappears into a wood and sees our attack on the transmitting station from afar. One has to be careful not to dive too low in this attack because the masts are connected by many cables and it is easy to fly into them. The little building is centered in my sights, I press the button, pull out and circle round the masts, waiting to see the result and for my squadron to reform. By chance one of my little 35 lb. bombs has hit the tip of one of the masts; it snapped and bent at a right angle. There is nothing more to be seen of the building down below as the bombs have done their work. They will not be broadcasting their vicious propaganda from here for quite a while. With this comforting thought we return to base.

The increasing pressure on the Carpathian passes shows more and more clearly the extent of the damage to our strength caused by the Rumanian debacle. The Soviets have advanced a long way beyond Hermannstadt; they are nearly at Thorenburg and are trying to capture Klausenburg. Most of the units in this sector are Hungarian, chiefly the first and second Hungarian armored divisions. There are practically no German reserves available to form a backbone of resistance in this important sector. This Soviet advance will imperil the German units holding the Carpathians far to the north. They will have to abandon their positions in the passes with serious consequences because the Carpathians, being a natural fortress, are the key to the Hungarian plains and it will be extremely difficult to hold them with our diminished strength. For the most part the Soviets have had a soft job the last few weeks, for they are advancing through an “allied” Rumania where a coherent German resistance has been impossible. Our motto has been: “Get out of Rumania; next stop the Carpathians.” But Rumania has an elongated frontier and this means an extension of our already too thinly defended front.

We move back for a few days to an airfield west of Sächsisch Regen from where we make almost daily sorties over the Thorenburg area. For the first time since goodness knows how long the Iron Gustavs again participate in the fighting on the ground. On every sortie we stay in the target area as long as our petrol lasts, always hoping for an encounter with our competition from the other side. The 3rd Squadron does the bombing, escorted by the 2nd with the Wing staff and myself in FW 190s. During this phase we are successful in shooting down a large number of Russian attack planes and fighters. The skipper of my 2nd Squadron, Flight Lieutenant Kennel, who has the Oak Leaves, has particularly good hunting. It is not actually our business as dive bombers and attack aircraft to shoot down enemy aircraft, but in the present crisis it seems to me very important for our comrades on the ground that we should master the enemy’s air force. So our expert tank marksmen also engage aircraft, and with excellent results. These operations show us old Ju. 87 fliers very clearly that the hounds have a better time of it than the hare. None the less we still swear by our old kites.

In September 1944 the battle for the Hungarian plains becomes an actuality. As this moment the news of my promotion to Wing Commander reaches me. The Wing staff with ground personnel is stationed for a short time at Tasnad, South of Tokay. The 1st and 2nd Squadrons with their operational elements and myself S.E. of Tasnad, the 3rd Squadron moves into the Miskolcz area where they are seriously hampered by airfield conditions: the whole surrounding country, including the roads leading to the airfield, have been turned into a swamp by torrential rain.

Our stay is only a short one here, where we are able to put up a fight in the area Grosswardein—Cegled—Debrecen. The Russian hordes move fast, almost exclusively by night. They remain stationary during the day well camouflaged in the woodland near the roads or in maize fields, or keeping under cover in the villages. Bombing and aerial attack becomes of secondary importance to reconnaissance, for targets must be recognized before it is possible to do any vital damage. There  is at present no cohesion on the German front; there are merely isolated battle groups hastily improvised by welding together units which have either fought their way back from Rumania or have previously formed part of the lines of communication troops in Hungary. These units are a medley of all branches of the army. At special focal points the names of crack formations appear: infantry regiments with great traditions, armored divisions, S.S. formations, all old acquaintances of ours and friends with whom we have shared the hardships of the arduous years in Russia. They love and esteem their Stukas and we feel the same. If we know that one of these units is below us we can be sure there will be no untoward surprises. We know most of their flying control officers personally, or at any rate their voices. They indicate to us every nest of resistance however small, and we then attack them with everything we have got. The ground units follow up our attack with lightning speed and sweep everything before them. But the enemy’s numerical superiority is so immense that the biggest local successes are merely a drop in the bucket. The Russians are established to right and left of these engagements and we have not soldiers enough to hold them there, and another break-through follows with the result that even those units who are standing firm are compelled to retire lest their line of retreat be cut.

This happens here time and again until we are back on the Theiss which is to be held as a new defense line. This river is narrow, and in a war with modern technical resources does not represent much of an obstacle. At Szeged the Russians have very soon gained a strong bridgehead which we are unable to dent, and from which they make a swift thrust N.W. towards Kecskemet. My Wing has moved back once again and we are now at Farmos, W. of Szolnok, on the railway line from Szolnok to Budapest. Our airfield is frequently visited by four-engined American bombers which have hitherto concentrated their attentions on the railway bridge at Szolnok.

We have no complaints about our rations here because Niermann has obtained permission to shoot game and one can almost speak of a plague of hares. Every day he returns with a big bag; Fridolin is sick of the very sight of a hare. Sometimes now there is a real nip in the air, the year is making giant strides towards the winter. When taking my evening cross country run in the neighborhood of Farmos I succumb to the fascination of the plains in a way I would not have thought possible for a mountaineer like myself.

We are out mostly in the vicinity of the Theiss beyond the river, but also on our side of it as the Soviets have succeeded in forming bridgeheads on the west bank at several places. Our targets, as in the case of all previous river crossings, are concentrations of material on the river bank and on the approach roads, in addition to the constantly newly built bridges and the traffic across the river which is partly carried out with very primitive methods. Rafts, old sailing craft, fishing boats and private pleasure boats all ply across the narrow Theiss. Ivan has lost no time in collecting together this heterogeneous ferry service. It is chiefly active at first in the area between Szeged and Szolnok, later also further north.