CHAPTER 21
Back in the Air
I do not believe that any one of us could strap in for takeoff, and not think that it would be our last mission.
Following Steinhoff’s near-fatal crash, Galland’s absence was felt, but in his absence Oberstleutnant Heinz Bär knew, as did any good leader and executive officer, that the best way to get the men’s minds off what had happened was to get them right back into combat, and he did. April 19, the day after the fiery crash, JV-44 joined JG-7 in an overlapping engagement against heavy bombers. JV-44 had three pilots score victories. Bär scored two B-17s, while Hans Grünberg, who had only just arrived at the unit, shot down a B-17, as he described:
“It was not really that exciting, unless you include bailing out of my burning jet over Prague. I shot down the bomber, and my jet took just a few hits too many. I lost complete control, one engine was dead and the other on fire, so I decided it was enough for one day. I rolled the jet left, sideways and pushed out. My parachute worked well, and that was pretty much the end of the war and flying for me.”{1}
April 20 was uneventful from a scramble standpoint, but several pilots were going to fly reconnaissance missions once more fuel arrived. The first was Gerd Barkhorn, who was new to JV-44 and just recently transitioned into the jet. He had an uneventful day until he came in with an engine failure. Like many pilots with an engine fire, he opened his coffin lid canopy to jump out if necessary. Upon the hard impact, his canopy slammed shut as his body was thrown forward, the edge of the bezel slamming down on his neck. He was lucky that it was not broken, but, like his old friend Steinhoff, he was out of the war.
April 20, 1945, was Adolf Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday and was celebrated. It was also the official promotion day in the armed forces. On that day the 323rd, 397th, and 394th Bomb Groups of the Ninth Air Force were launched against Memmingen. In his memoir, Louis S. Rehr, who was the commanding officer of one of the squadrons that day, described the event: “Our initial point was a town called Kempten, south of Memmingen. Here we tightened up our individual groups of six for a four-minute bomb run. We opened the bomb bays and held steady. Arcs of light flak, probably from positions in the higher terrain, crossed our path. Fifteen more seconds until the drop.
“Suddenly, an aircraft ripped the skies directly overhead. Instantly, all hell broke loose. Within seconds, flames billowed from the left engine of a Marauder flying directly behind box leader Smith [probably Krupinski’s kill]. Pieces of wing and fuselage blew past. The Marauder behind the damaged bomber barely avoided a midair collision. Then the ill-fated plane rolled over and dropped beneath the formation. Calls from other pilots to bail out went unheeded.
“Simultaneously, the Me 262 pulled straight up as it passed over the formation. Then he abruptly reversed direction and came at us head-on. What a hell of a mess. He dove underneath, preparing for another strike. For an instant, I wanted to break formation, chase him, knock him out of the sky with my forward firing guns. Somebody had to do something. Stick to the rules. Stay tight. Concentrate the firepower. Follow the leader. Now, bombs away!
“A couple of P-51s flew past with their guns blasting. Two more jets zoomed up from beneath, passing one hundred yards to my right. Gunners and P-51s diverted them from taking aim at Smith. Their sport did not end with the attack at the front of the formation. As the last six Marauders passed over the IP, a swarm of jets struck. Three jets following one another in ten-second intervals zoomed up from the six o’clock position, then dove on the formation. The first and second jets barely cleared the lead Marauder flown by 1st Lt. James Hansen. The third jet would have collided with Hansen’s bomber, but at the last second, the German [Schallmoser] dove his jet under the Marauder’s right propeller. Half the jet’s rudder flew off [Schallmoser collided], and the aircraft fell away. Hansen was lucky. He managed to keep both engines running. However, every other Marauder that followed was in trouble.
“The last Marauder in his group of six took a hit and lost both engines. Then the right engine burst into flames, and the bomber dropped through the clouds. Fortunately, its crew managed to bail out over friendly territory. Guns from another jet [Steinhoff] sent an explosion into the cockpit of the number 5 Marauder. The B-26 pilot, 1st Lt. James Vining, flying Ugly Duckling in the 455th squadron, bled profusely from his lower right leg, where the blast had nearly severed his foot from his ankle.
“The jet’s guns also knocked out his right engine. His copilot managed to crash land the plane, but it ran into a camouflaged tank trap. The aircraft broke into three pieces, killing the turret gunner and seriously injuring the others. The number 3 Marauder lost part of a propeller and continued flying on a single engine. Numbers 2 and 4 had damage, but kept going. P-51s arrived on the scene, but they were too little, too late.
“We ended the day with one of the highest casualty lists in the history of the 323rd. First Lieutenant Dale Sanders and his entire crew perished in the Marauder that blew up in front of me [Galland’s spectacular kill]. In all, we lost seven men and three aircraft. Another seven men were wounded and seven aircraft damaged. From the waist of my bomber, Wolfe shot what may be the only photo of Marauders under attack by Me 262s. It is not easy to see the jets, which have dived well beneath us preparing for their treacherous climbs. Given the surprise and the speed of these attacks, it is a miracle there is any photo. Several of our gunners claimed hits on the jets, but at the end of the day, it was difficult to reconstruct those seconds of confusion and response.
“That day, however, the Germans lost no men. Eduard Schallmoser, the Me 262 pilot with the severed rudder, managed to parachute to safety. Several gunners fired on Schallmoser’s jet, as did pilot Vining, who used his forward guns. Vining later admitted that as he took aim, he loosened his position in the formation. This made him an easy target for the German aces. Schallmoser claims that he dropped into his mother’s garden with an injured knee. Before heading back to the base and then a hospital, he enjoyed a plateful of her pancakes.”{2}
As incredible as it sounds, Schallmoser, despite hitting two of the bombers with cannons, did not score a victory that way, but he did clip the propeller of the B-26 flown by Hansen with his rudder, hence the aircraft disintegrating, forcing him to leave his doomed aircraft. Schallmoser did indeed land right in his mother’s backyard, getting tangled in the clothesline under his parachute. He ignored the bleeding from his minor wound, where a .50-caliber round had pierced the fuselage, blown the armored plate section into his leg, and opened a superficial gash on his right knee, which his mother bandaged. Schallmoser wrote of the event:
“I turned too late and rammed the Marauder, which then fell away and crashed [actually Hansen managed to nurse his bomber back to base without further incident and no casualties, as stated accurately in Robert Forsyth, JV-44: The Galland Circus]. Meanwhile, my Me 262 “White 11” was a complete loss and I was able, with my last reserves of strength, to escape the aircraft by parachute and landed safely at my mother’s home on the outskirts of Lenzfried-im-Allgäu.”{3}
His mother made a telephone call to a local hospital, but due to the long period of time it would take to get there, she fed him a large meal, and they caught up on events. Schallmoser did score three confirmed kills and additional claims: a victory over a P-38 (which he rammed) on April 3, a B-26 on April 16 (shot and rammed), and a B-17 (which he shot up and also rammed) on April 17, and the B-26 which he’d clipped before landing at his mother’s house. Schallmoser was taken to the hospital after the latter event and was released the next day.