Galland’s comments as related in Morgan substantiate Stigler’s observations: “The vulnerability of the jets during takeoff and landing especially was caused by the relatively long time needed for retracting or extending the landing gear, as well as the aircraft’s slow acceleration with flaps and undercarriage extended. Therefore we had pistonengined fighters, mostly long-nosed Fw 190Ds, on our jet landing bases to protect the takeoffs and landings of the jets, as the Allied fighters found out very soon that this was the weakest point of the Me 262.”{9}
CHAPTER 11
Fighting the Fighters
The first time I encountered a jet fighter, I thought, “Man, we are so screwed.”
It seems ironic that the first units to receive the jets should be the bomber units, which was part and parcel of Hitler’s delusion of striking the enemy behind his own lines with a fast attack. While perhaps making a few Allied personnel nervous and proving an inconvenience, it was not about to turn the tide in the war. The jets did not have great range, they could not carry the heavy payloads of Allied heavy bombers, and their pilots, for the most part, were not trained or experienced in fighting against enemy fighters when engaged. Their losses rose sharply for very little result for their efforts.
The first confirmed Me 262 lost in aerial combat did not belong to a fighter unit, but instead belonged to Kommando Schenck and was flown by Oberfeldwebel Hieronymus “Ronny” Lauer of I./KG-51. On August 28, 1944, while approaching his airfield, he crash-landed his jet while under attack by Maj. Joseph Myers and 2nd Lt. Manford O. Croy, both flying P-47 Thunderbolts from the 78th Fighter Group. Lauer managed to climb out of the jet as it was finally strafed and destroyed. The first Me 262 lost from 3/KG-51 was flown by H. C. Butmann and shot down by a flight of Spitfire IXs of 401 RCAF on October 5, 1944. This aircraft was designated 9K+BL with work number 170093 and was a total loss as well.{1}
While Schenck and others flew the Me 262 in their bombing missions, they found themselves falling prey to the droves of Allied fighters that always jumped them from higher altitude, a problem well stated by Krupinski and Stigler. Given the types of missions they were flying, and the fact that they seldom operated with fighter cover during their missions and even when they had fighter cover, it was usually limited protection over their airfields, and their longevity was in question. Galland knew that it was a waste of a valuable asset, a stupid decision based upon a layman’s lack of understanding. Unfortunately, for Galland and his fighter pilots, that “layman” was the most powerful dictator in the world.
The bomber units were not in the business of devising new tactics, especially fighter tactics, as the majority of these men were not fighter pilots. Air-to-air combat was a learned trade, and the men gained experience through combat. Unless new offensive and defensive tactics were rapidly developed, the new jets in the role of bombers were nothing more than flying targets making Allied aces.
The Germans rapidly realized that although their jets were faster in the climb and they could escape any Allied fighter by pulling the nose up, they were not as fortunate when they tried to dive away from a pursuing enemy fighter. Despite the much higher speed in a dive, several jet pilots soon learned what American P-38 pilots had discovered: the control surfaces had a tendency to freeze at high speed when in a dive. The account by Stigler is noteworthy:
“Once I was flying at around ten thousand meters (over thirty-three thousand feet), and I saw three P-51s above me; they were high. They went into a dive on me, and I know that I was not going to fight them, so I dropped the nose and went into a dive. Within perhaps twenty seconds, they were still five hundred meters above me, diving in, and I was gone. I then tried to pull up, and the joystick just froze. I felt myself grow cold. I thought that I had just killed myself. The plane would not rise, and the airspeed indicator read over one thousand kilometers per hour.
“I was surprised that the aircraft did not rattle, the engines were fine, so I alternated kicking the rudder left and right quickly, and really did some praying. This seemed to break the evil spell, and slowly I regained control. By the time I pulled up, I was looking to my left and saw the shocked faces of a group of farmers in this field. As I banked around, catching my breath, I saw that I had been so low I actually blew all of the hay they had collected off the wagon, some of it was smoking! I learned right then that I would never do that again. I would outrun them straight or climb, but going down steep was taboo. No more of that, and I wrote a report and gave it to Galland. Later the next day we actually had a briefing on my experience. Remember that we were all still learning about these planes. This was a valuable lesson.”
Galland and the other leaders knew that the Me 262 was so fast that new tactics had to be devised to attack American bombers and survive Allied fighters. In the head-on attack method, which proved so effective by the few experten who could master it in conventional fighters, the closing was very fast, but not so fast as to prevent getting good cannon hits in a diving pass. This method also severely limited the gunners in the bomber formations from getting a solid target acquisition. Walter Schuck explained the best way to knock down a heavy bomber in the Me 262:
“The bombers had to be hit in or near the inboard engines, for it was through this area of the wing that the fuel lines ran. I simply couldn’t understand why other pilots would choose to attack a bomber box from the side, from below, or from the front. It was against tactics such as these that the B-17 really lived up to its name as a ‘Flying Fortress.’
“Only if one flew with, and not against, the bomber stream, and only if one attacked from above, could one escape the worst of its concentrated firepower. Furthermore, the B-17s’ gunners could open fire on us with their heavy machine-guns from an effective range of seven hundred meters, where as our four Mk 108 nose cannons were calibrated for a range of only about three hundred meters.”{2}
JG-7 pilots had already learned many of these lessons, which were later passed on to JV- 44, which did not become fully operational until very late in the war in March 1945. Most of that month was spent training and organizing the new unit. During this time the unit scored its first kill, an IL-2 Sturmovik shot down by Oberstleutnant Johannes Steinhoff, just before the unit was relocated to Munich-Riem.
The purpose of this assignment was twofold: to better protect the railway junctions and jet production plants in southern Germany. By the end of the war, JV-44 had shot down fifty-six aircraft. Johannes Steinhoff recalled his first fighter versus fighter encounter against Soviet aircraft while flying the Me 262 shortly after he joined JG-7, just before taking command replacing Eder, who had in fact been promoted to command the day Walter Nowotny was killed:
“I once engaged about twelve or so Soviet fighters, mostly Yaks, I think, and as I winged over to attack, it looked as if they were standing still, not moving at all. This one guy was above me, and he must have seen me, as he half rolled and pulled tight into a right hand banking maneuver, and then there was another that also banked right, passing right in front of me, just past my nose. I was caught in his propeller wash, the buffeting was intense. He was probably about forty feet off my wing. I never had a chance to shoot either of these guys. But there was another Yak that was turning left, in a shallow bank, and I wanted him. I was below him, also turning left to get in close, and when I sighted him I fired, but missed. I saw the cannon rounds streak behind him. This was when I began to doubt the dogfighting qualities of the Me 262.”{3}