Stuka Pilot (5 page)

The return flight takes much too long for my liking, but at last I see Stoltzy ahead of me. The tension relaxes sensibly and I stretch my shoulders again. There are some of our fighters at Stoltzy, and now it will not be long before we are back at our station. “Scharnovski, you are to bale out over the airfield.”

I have no idea what my machine looks like from the ground nor how the holes in the wings will affect its aerodynamic characteristics when landing. There must be no unnecessary damage now.

“I won’t. You’ll make it all right, sir,” he replies in an almost level voice. What can one answer to that?

The airfield is below us. I see it with new eyes; it has a more homelike appearance than usual. There my Ju can have a good rest; there are my comrades, the familiar faces. Somewhere down there hangs my tunic and in one of the pockets the last letter received from home. What was it my mother wrote? A chap ought to read his mother’s letters through more carefully!

The squadron has apparently been paraded for dispersal. Are they perhaps being briefed for another sortie? In that case we must hurry. Now they are all staring up at our aircraft and moving away. I get ready to land and in order to have a safety factor I come in at a pretty fair speed. After taxiing for a considerable distance I am safely back. Some of the chaps have run alongside us for the last hundred yards. I climb out of the aircraft; so does Scharnovski with perfect nonchalance. Now our colleagues cluster round us and pat us on the back. I hurriedly push my way through this welcoming committee and report to the skipper:

“Pilot Officer Rudel returning from ops. Special incident—contact with the ground in the target area—aircraft unserviceable.”

He shakes us by the hand; a smile on his face. Then with a shake of the head he walks away towards the squadron tent.

Of course we have to repeat the whole story to the others. They tell us they had just been paraded to hear the skipper deliver a short obituary speech. “Pilot Officer Rudel and his crew attempted the impossible. They tried to attack the set target by diving through the storm, and death has claimed them.” He was just filling his lungs to start a new sentence when the battered Ju. 87 appeared on the edge of the airfield. Then he turned even paler and quickly dismissed the parade.

Even now in the tent he flatly refuses to believe that I did not purposely dive into the storm instead of being plunged into pitch black darkness because I was flying so close to his aircraft when he suddenly banked round.

“I assure you, sir, it wasn’t intentional.”

“Rubbish! You are exactly that kind of idiot You absolutely determined to attack the railway station.”

“You overestimate me, sir.”

“The future will prove I was right. Incidentally we are going out again presently.”

An hour later I am flying next to him with another aircraft again in the Luga sector. In the evening I work off my inner tension and my physical lassitude in a game.

The following morning our objective is Nowgorod, where the big bridge that spans the Wolchow collapses under our bombs The Soviets are trying to get as many men and as much material as possible across the Wolchow and the Lowat, which flows into Lake Ilmen from the South, before it is too late. Therefore we have to keep on attacking the bridges. Their destruction delays the enemy, but not for long; we very soon realize that Pontoons are quickly constructed in between them and in this way the Soviets perseveringly patch up the damage we have caused.

This constant operational flying without intermission brings on many symptoms of fatigue, sometimes with distressing results. The skipper is very quick at noticing them, too. Operational instructions from the wing, transmitted over the telephone at midnight or even later, must now be listened to and taken down by two of us. On more than one occasion misunderstandings have arisen in the morning for which every one is convinced that the others blame him. The reason is really general exhaustion.

The C.O. and I are detailed to listen jointly to the wings nocturnal briefings. One night the telephone rings in the squadron tent. It is the wing commander on the line.

“Steen, we meet our fighter escort tomorrow morning at 5 A.M. over Batjeskoje.”

The exact point is very important. We hunt for it on the map by the light of a pocket torch, but we find no Batjeskoje. We have no clue as to where to look for it.

Our desperation is as vast as Russia. Finally he says: “I am sorry, sir. I can’t find the place on the map.”

Now the wing commander’s angry voice yaps in his Berlin accent: “What! Call yourself a squadron leader and don’t know where Batjeskoje is!”

“Can you please give me the map reading, sir,” says Steen.

A lengthy silence, endlessly prolonged. I look at him, he looks at me. Then suddenly: “Damned if I know the place either, but I’m putting Pekrun on the line. He knows where it is.”

His adjutant then quietly explains the exact location of the tiny village in the fen lands. A peculiar fellow, our wing commander; when he is angry or when he particularly wishes to be friendly, in either case, he talks like a typical Berliner. Where discipline and system are concerned our wing owes a lot to him.

4. THE BATTLE FOR THE FORTRESS OF LENINGRAD

 T
he centre of the fighting is gravitating more and more Northwards. So, in September 1941, we are sent to Tyrkowo, South of Luga, in the Northern sector of the Eastern front. We go out daily over the Leningrad area where the army has opened an offensive from the West and from the South. Lying as it does between the Finnish Gulf and Lake Ladoga, the geographical position of Leningrad is. a big advantage to the defenders since the possible ways of attacking it are strictly limited.

For some time progress here has been slow. One almost has the impression that we are merely marking time.

On the 16th September Flight Lieutenant Steen summons us to a conference. He explains the military situation and tells us that the particular difficulty holding up the further advance of our armies is the presence of the Russian fleet moving up and down the coast at a certain distance from the shore and intervening in the battles with their formidable naval guns.

The Russian fleet is based on Kronstadt, an island in the Gulf of Finland, the largest war harbour in the U.S.S.R.

Approximately 12 ½ miles from Kronstadt lies the harbour of Leningrad and South of it the ports of Oranienbaum and Peterhof. Very strong enemy forces are massed round these two towns on a strip of coast some six miles long. We are told to mark all the positions precisely on our maps so as to ensure our being able to recognize our own front line. We are beginning to guess that these troop concentrations will be our objective when FTt./Lt. Steen gives another turn to the briefing. He comes back to the Russian fleet and explains that our chief concern is the two battleships
Marat
and
Oktobreskaja Revolutia
. Both are ships of about 23,000 tons. In addition, there are four or five cruisers, among them the
Maxim Gorki
and the
Kirov
, as well as a number of destroyers. The ships constantly change their positions according to which parts of the mainland require the support of their devastating and accurate gunfire.

As a rule, however, the battleships navigate only in the deep channel between Kronstadt and Leningrad.

Our wing has just received orders to attack the Russian fleet in the Gulf of Finland. There is no question of using normal bomber-aircraft, any more than normal bombs, for this operation, especially as intense flak must be reckoned with. He tells us that we are awaiting the arrival of two thousand pounder bombs fitted with a special detonator for our purpose. With normal detonators the bomb would burst ineffectively on the armored main deck and though the explosion would be sure to rip off some parts of the upper structure it would not result in the sinking of the ship. We cannot expect to succeed and finish off these two leviathans except by the use of a delayed action bomb which must first pierce the upper decks before exploding deep down in the hull of the vessel.

A few days later, in the foulest weather, we are suddenly ordered to attack the battleship Marat; she has just been located in action by a reconnaissance patrol. The weather is reported as bad until due South of Krasnowardeisk, 20 miles South of Leningrad. Cloud density over the Gulf of Finland 5-7/10; cloud base 2400 feet. That will mean flying through a layer of cloud which where we are is 6000 feet thick. The whole wing takes off on a Northerly course. Today we are about thirty aircraft strong; according to our establishment we should have eighty, but numbers are not invariably the decisive factor.

Unfortunately the two thousand pounders have not yet arrived. As our single engined Stukas are not capable of flying blind our No. 1 has to do the next best thing and keep direction with the help of the few instruments: ball, bank indicator and vertical speed indicator. The rest of us keep station by flying close enough to one another to be able to catch an occasional glimpse of our neighbor’s wing. Flying in the dense, dark clouds it is imperative never to let the interval between the tips of our wings exceed 9-12 feet. If it is greater we risk losing our neighbor for good and running full tilt into an other aircraft. This is an awe-inspiring thought! In such weather conditions therefore the safety of the whole wing is in the highest degree dependent on the instrument flying of our No. 1.

Below 6000 feet we are in a dense cloud cover; the individual flights have slightly broken formation.

Now they close up again. There is still no ground visibility. Reckoning by the clock we must pretty soon be over the Gulf of Finland. Now, too, the cloud cover is thinning out a little. There is a glint of blue sky below us; ergo water. We should be approaching our target, but where exactly are we? It is impossible to tell because the rifts in the clouds are only infinitesimal. The cloud density can no longer be anything like 5-7/10; only here and there the thick soup dissolves to reveal an isolated gap. Suddenly through one such gap I see something and instantly contact Fit. Lt. Steen over, the radio.

“König 2 to König 1… come in, please.”

He immediately answers:

“König 1 to König 2… over to you.”

“Are you there? I can see a large ship below us… the battleship
Marat
, I guess.”

We are still talking as Steen loses height and disappears into the gap in the clouds. In mid-sentence I also go into a dive. Pilot Officer Klaus behind me in the other staff aeroplane follows suit. Now I can make out the ship. It is the Moral sure enough. I suppress my excitement with an iron will. To make up my mind, to grasp the situation in a flash: for this I have only seconds. It is we who must hit the ship, for it is scarcely likely that all the flights will get through the gap. Both gap and ship are moving. We shall not be a good target for the flak until in our dive we reach the cloud base at 2400 feet. As long as we are above the unbroken cloud base the flak can only fire by listening apparatus, they cannot open up properly. Very well then: dive, drop bombs and back into the clouds! The bombs from Steen’s aircraft are already on their way down… near misses. I press the bomb switch…dead on. My bomb hits the after deck. A pity it is only a thousand pounder! All the same I see flames break out. I cannot afford to hang about to watch it, for the flak barks furiously. There, the others are still diving through the gap. The Soviet flak has by this time realized where the “filthy Stukas” are coming from and concentrate their fire on this point. We exploit the favorable cloud cover and climb back into it. Nevertheless, at a later date, we are not to escape from this area so relatively unscathed.

Once we are home again the guessing game immediately begins: what can have been the extent of the damage to the ship after the direct hit? Naval experts claim that with a bomb of this small calibre a total success must be discounted. A few optimists, on the other hand, think it possible. As if to confirm their opinion, in the course of the next few days our reconnaissance patrols, despite the most enterprising search, are quite unable to find the
Marat
.

In an ensuing operation a cruiser sinks in a matter of minutes under my bomb.

After the first sortie our luck with the weather is out. Always a brilliant blue sky and murderous flak. I never again experience anything to compare with it in any place or theatre of war. Our reconnaissance estimates that a hundred A.A. guns are concentrated in an area of six-square miles in the target zone. The flak bursts form a whole cumulus of cloud. If the explosions are more than ten or twelve feet away one cannot hear the flak from the flying aircraft. But we hear no single bursts; rather an incessant tempest of noise like the clap of doomsday. The concentrated zones of flak in the air space begin as soon as we cross the coastal strip which is still in Soviet hands. Then come Oranienbaum and Peterhof; being harbors, very strongly defended.

The open water is alive with pontoons, barges, boats and tiny craft, all stiff with flak. The Russians use every possible site for their A.A. guns. For instance, the mouth of Leningrad harbour is supposed to have been closed to our U-boats by means of huge steel nets suspended from a chain of concrete blocks floating on the surface of the water. Even from these blocks A.A. guns bark at us.

After about another six miles we sight the island of Kronstadt with its great naval harbour and the town of the same name. Both harbour and town are heavily defended, and besides the whole Russian Baltic fleet is anchored in the immediate vicinity, in and outside the harbour. And it can put up a murderous barrage of flak. We in the leading staff aircraft always fly at an altitude between 9,000 and 10,000 feet; that is very low, but after all we want to hit something. When diving onto the ships we use our diving brakes in order to check our diving speed. This gives us more time to sight our target and to correct our aim. The more carefully we aim, the better the results of our attack, and everything depends on them. By reducing our diving speed we make it easier for the flak to bring us down, especially as if we do not overshoot we cannot climb so fast after the dive. But, unlike the flights behind us, we do not generally try to climb back out of the dive. We use different tactics and pull out at low level close above the water. We have then to take the widest evasive action over the enemy-occupied coastal strip. Once we have left it behind we can breathe freely again.