“I started down in about a sixty-degree dive with my wing tanks still on. As I got lower, I could see I wasn’t gaining any on the aircraft so I dropped my tanks. I was hitting about five hundred miles per hour and didn’t seem to be closing on the aircraft at all. He actually was pulling further away from me. Just about that time, I saw the spurts of smoke that usually come out of a jet-propelled aircraft and wasn’t too much luck. By this time we were right on the deck. I could see I wasn’t gaining on the jet job and was about to give up the chase when he started a shallow turn to the left.
“I immediately started a sharper turn to cut him off. As I was cutting him off, he started tightening his turn. When we finally passed each other all I got was about a ninety-degree deflection shot, which didn’t do me any good at all. I racked my ship around and started after him again, thinking that his speed would have been cut down in his turn. As we straightened out, I could see he wasn’t pulling away from me but I couldn’t gain on him either. I had everything wide open and was indicating about four hundred ten miles per hour straight and level on the deck.
“I chased him on this leg of the hunt about thirty seconds when I observed this airfield directly ahead of me. I could see that the jet pilot intended to drag me across the field behind him. I called my flight and told them to hug the deck as closely as they could and I started a sharp right turn to skirt the edge of the airdrome. The flak was terrific, and one of my wingmen was hit and had to bail out.
“There was a small marshalling yard directly ahead of me, and I was going too fast to miss it. They opened up with another heavy flak barrage from all over the marshalling yard. The jet job was still ahead of me and flying on a fairly straight course. I had been firing on the ship in his turns and every time I thought I was anywhere near being in range so I had used up quite a bit of my ammunition.
“Just then another jet-propelled aircraft dropped out of the lower cloud layer, which was about four thousand feet, and headed for my flight. My wingman started a sharp turn into him, but the jet pilot kept right on going and made no attempt to stay around and mix it up. The first jet job started another shallow turn and I started firing from about a thousand yards.
“I was too far out of range and couldn’t get any hits on him at all. The jet-propelled ship then headed back for the airfield. I had fired up all my ammunition except a couple hundred rounds and my wingman had been separated when he turned into the other jet, so I decided it was just about time I left. I climbed, after pinpointing myself for the rest of the Group, and headed home.”{8} This would not be Drew’s last encounter with the jets, and the Germans would not be as lucky in the future.
Drew would later claim two jet kills in the same mission on October 7, 1944, with both being JG-7 units. In a twist of irony, more than forty years later, an Air Force clerk noticed Drew’s claim for his two Me 262 victories on the same mission. She contacted a custodian of German war records, who knew former Luftwaffe pilots who may have been alive and able to provide eyewitness testimony regarding his claims, since his wingman had been shot down by flak and was not a witness. Georg-Peter Eder had been set to lead the mission, but due to his jet having technical problems, he remained on the ground. Eder stated in his affidavit that he saw a yellow-nosed P-51 dive on the Me 262s and shoot both of them down just over the runway. Eder’s detailed account was sufficient to confirm Drew’s two Me 262 victories.
The rest of 1944 was very similar to the previously mentioned event. JG-7 would be thrown against an avalanche of enemy aircraft, often barely able to get a full squadron airborne, and each mission meant damaged or lost aircraft and wounded or possibly killed pilots. All of these events through 1944 established the jet as a threat, but a manageable one. The establishment of JG-7 from the remnants of Kommando Nowotny, and later the creation of JV-44, meant that while few in number, the German jets were being flown by some of the best and most combat-experienced pilots on earth.
One was Major Rudi Sinner, commanding officer of III./JG-7 who had previously seen action with JGs-27 and 54. Sinner was jumped by Mustangs at 0915 hours by Capt. Robert C. Coker and Capt. Kirke B. Everson while taking off from Rechlin on April 4, 1945.{9} Hermann Buchner just barely missed the action that almost killed Rudi Sinner:
“I flew as leader of the second Schwarm. Sinner started first with the first Schwarm, and I followed a few minutes later with the second. Over the airfield the cloud base was down to about a hundred meters, and as I pulled up the wheels and flaps and began to climb, I heard Sinner over the radio reporting enemy contact; but when we emerged from the clouds no American fighters were in sight. I led my flight towards Hamburg.”{10} Sinner had apparently drawn all the enemy attention, leaving Buchner’ path clear. Sinner described the action:
“Climbing up through the cloud I saw four enemy aircraft in formation above me and against the sun [Thunderbolts]. I climbed steeply but could not catch them, then one of the Thunderbolts dived steeply at me. I learned later that these enemy aircraft were Mustangs. My rockets would not fire and the rest of the gruppe had no luck.
“I tried to outrun the Mustangs, but saw four Mustangs behind me in an attacking position. I dived and turned sharply but was hit from behind and damaged. Then I tried a series of evasive maneuvers, but I could not throw off the Mustangs, as I was now too low. I was now running from eight Mustangs, which were shooting at me. I tried to find some cloud cover in the hope of losing my attackers and attempted to fire my rockets, but two of the Mustangs followed me closely. I did not see my rockets fire.
“As I pressed the rocket firing switch my cockpit began to fill with dense smoke, and I saw that my left wing was on fire. The fire soon reached the cockpit, and I decided to bail out. The airspeed was seven hundred kilometers per hour when I bailed out, and I struck the tail in doing so. I realized that my parachute was not open and that my right leg had become entangled in the harness.”{11} He barely got his chute open on time.
This was his last bailout and wounding. His war was over. Rudolf Sinner had finished with thirty-nine victories in 305 missions, with thirty-six kills over the Western Front (including three four-engine bombers), and three kills in the Me 262. Three of his victories were over the Eastern Front. He had been shot down a dozen times and bailed out three times. He was wounded on five occasions.
April 4 also saw the loss of one of Germany’s most successful aces and tragic heroes, Major Heinrich Ehrler, formerly a leading ace with JG-5 “Eismeer” with a wartime tally of 208 kills, the last eight in the Me 262, who had joined JG-7 with his old friend Weissenberger, also later joined by his friend Walter Schuck, also from his Arctic unit. Schuck tells the tale of Ehrler’s final mission:
“At the time I was with a number of other pilots in the ops room, and we followed the R/T exchanges over the loudspeaker. Weissenberger had just reported the destruction of a B-17 when we recognized Ehrler’s voice on air: ‘Theo, Heinrich here. Have just shot down two bombers. No more ammunition. I’m going to ram. Auf Wiedersehen, see you in Valhalla!’