“I saw another 262 probably heading for home and decided he was not going to get away. I firewalled the throttle and dropped altitude, and there was no flak at all. I closed with him, using altitude for speed, and opened fire. I was getting good strikes as he went in for landing, with me screaming down on him at about five hundred knots. He was touching down, and I had to pull up or crash… and the best I could have claimed was a damaged or probable anyway.
“As I pulled up from the airfield, something shook my aircraft—like something had punched it. Instantly, I had fire in the cockpit, and smoke was pouring in, so I pulled straight up, using the high airspeed to gain altitude, and rolled the canopy back. I was still pulling good power even though the smoke was heavy and fire had broken out in the cockpit, so I lightly rolled the bird over and went out over the right side.”{6} Another perspective on Haydon’s last flight attacking Lechfeld, which was the most heavily defended Me 262 airfield, was chronicled in Merle Olmsted’s To War with the Yoxford Boys:
“Lt. Col. Andrew Evans led the mission, escorting 3rd Division B-17s, again in marginal weather, which were bombing marshaling yards at Heilbronn. Two 262s were seen about noon in the Augsburg area, but neither was engaged. However, another was spotted in the target area at 18,000 feet, and Greenhouse White 1 and 2 (364th Sqn.) broke off the escort and gave chase. The section was led by Lt. Edward Haydon with Lt. Roland Wright as White 2. Wright’s encounter report tells us:
‘We were chasing an Me 262 about 1315 hours on the deck, and as it started an approach to land at Lechfeld airdrome, we turned across the edge of the field in order to fire on him. We were at an altitude of about 700 feet and Lt. Haydon was hit by flak before he could fire and pulled up and bailed out.
‘I continued on in, getting close to the deck, and saw numerous strikes on the cockpit and wing area of the enemy aircraft. The 262 went off the runway. I stayed on the deck taking evasive action until I was away from the field, as the flak was thick all around me. After getting away from the field I looked back and saw black smoke coming from the field and believe the 262 burned.’”
Haydon spent the rest of the war as a POW, and over the years, it would appear that his encounter with the two Me 262s on January 20, 1945, were probably with Erich Rudorffer, who described a similar event during that time, flying the first jet, and Theodor Weissenberger, who managed to land his damaged jet on the airfield. Ironically, the airfield that Weissenberger and Rudorffer chose was their own base, and the Fw190D air cover was already engaged, hence the lack of piston engine fighters covering the approach.{133}
What Haydon did not mention, and perhaps did not know, was that if in fact he and Karger were actually in the midst of a half-dozen ace jet pilots of KG-54 and JG-7, most were damaged or low on fuel, touching down at the nearest base. Rudorffer’s comments are of interest. Although he did not recall the exact date in January, his recollection of a similar event with Weissenberger in the same location is worth noting. He was kommandeur of I./JG-7, and Weissenberger had just been assigned to the unit as kommodore. Rudorffer described the event that he remembered:
“I had just been assigned to JG-7 after flying with JG-54. I had spoken to Walter Nowotny on occasion in Russia, as he was kommandeur of I./JG-54 and I was kommandeur of II./JG-54, but he was practically unknown to me.{7} When I joined the unit, they were relocating from Achmer to Lechfeld, which placed us further south. There was a lot of activity. I went head to head with this Mustang when I was on one of my orientation flights, but Weissenberger did this a couple of times with another one. It was very unreal, but no one was harmed and we landed, but he was damaged.”{8}
If this was indeed Weissenberger’s jet, it was the one hit by Haydon’s 0.50-caliber fire, and he was extremely lucky on that occasion, as the air defenses had removed Haydon from the equation. There is no record of a damaged jet on this date from JG-7, so it may have been a KG-54 Me 262, as several were landing. It could have also been Weissenberger’s, but due to such minimal damage, a report was not written, and the jet was repaired quickly that day. What was uncharacteristic was the lack of any significant pistonengined fighter cover protecting the jets. This may have meant that the airfield they landed on was not an officially operational jet field, but perhaps an emergency, training, or auxiliary strip nearby.
Galland had worked on devising the technique of protecting jets with flak and air cover, as he stated: “Operational survival was good as long as top cover was flown by conventional aircraft to protect the jets on takeoffs and landings. American fighters would hang around to try to catch them at those weak moments, which I was to learn firsthand in a few months. The big problem that was growing was that the Allies would target, bomb, and strafe the airfields, hoping to destroy the jets on the ground.”{9}
Another pilot to experience the “flak trap” while doing a low-level airfield attack and pay a high price for the effort with captivity was Dudley M. Amoss of the 55th Fighter Group. Although his regular fighter was Mah Ideel, Amoss was flying a different P-51D, Queenie, on March 21, 1945, when his sixty-sixth mission became his last:
“We’d been assigned to go in and clear out airbases southwest of Münster… My engine was acting up as we were heading home, but we took a strafing pass at an airfield and then my commanding officer told us to make another. I said, ‘Let’s not make another pass here, ’cause there’s nothing down there but machine guns,’ but we made another round. A fellow down there was shooting at me; I shot back at him and got a whole lot of lead. Just as I feared, a bullet hit my radiator. I kept going, but I knew I was hurt—there was smoke coming out as I was heading back, trying to reach Allied held territory in Belgium or at least get as far away from that German airfield as I could before my water-cooled engine seized up…
“I was puttin’ along, driving real low on the ground… I didn’t get a mile when my engine finally stopped. I had a complete loss of forward motion, but I could go down. I worked my way between the trees and had a lot of prayers answered when I saw an open field and bellied in near Lingen. There was a fire underneath. I stepped out, walked through what trees were left and saw a lot of people, 10 to 15 Krauts in an open field. I could see no choice—I just stepped out and walked toward them. They looked up and I said, ‘Howdy… how ya doin’?’”{10}
Another pilot who was chasing a jet kill and was more fortunate was Capt. Robert P. Winks, also of the 357th Fighter Group, when he attacked and shot down an Me 262 on January 15, 1945, killing the pilot, nineteen-year-old Rhode. As soon as the jet went down, antiaircraft fire erupted from Schongau airbase:
“Boy… did they have flak coming at me! I went straight into the heavens and suddenly I realized that my engine had lost power, it was only wind milling. When I dropped my auxiliary fuel tanks, I had failed to turn the fuel selector switch on to the internal fuel tanks. I corrected the switch, and the speed gained in my dive on the Me 262 plus the speed of the wing milling prop sucked out any airlock in my fuel lines, and the engine roared back into full power and got me out of there, f-a-s-t!”{11}
Allied pilots would develop and often exploit the tactic of waiting near the jet airfields, either strafing jets on the ground or trying to catch them at takeoff or landing, when they were vulnerable. This was when the Me 262 was defenseless, and many German pilots lost their lives or, as Eder described, were lucky if they survived.