Stuka Pilot

Only the 2nd Squadron is billeted in Kummer; the wing staff has its headquarters in the schoolhouse at Niemes, some of us live in the homes of the local in habitants who are 95 per cent German, and do everything possible to meet our every wish. The business of getting to and from the airfield is not altogether plain sailing, one man always squats on the mudguard of every car as look-out for enemy aircraft. American and Russian low-flying planes scour the country at every minute of the day, actually criss-crossing one another in this region. The more unpleasant visitors come from the West, the others from the East.

When we take off on a sortie we often find the “Amis” lying in wait for us in one direction and the “Russkis” in another. Our old Ju. 87 crawls like a snail in comparison with the enemy aircraft, and when we approach the objective of our mission the constant aerial combat strains our nerves to snapping point. If we attack the air is instantly alive with swarming foes; if we are on our homeward course we have again to force a passage through a ring of hostile aircraft before we can land. Our flak on the airfield usually has to “shoot us a free path.”

American fighters do not attack us if they see that we are headed for the front and already engaged in aerial combat with the Ivans.

We generally take off from the Kummer airfield in the morning with four or five anti-tank aircraft, accompanied by twelve to fourteen FW 190s carrying bombs and at the same time acting as our escort. The enemy then waits for our appearance in overwhelming superiority. Rarely, if we have sufficient petrol, we are able to carry out a combined operation with all the formations attached to my command, and then the enemy in the air outnumbers us by only five to one! Yes indeed, our daily bread is earned with sweat and tears.

On the 25th April another wireless signal from the Führer’s headquarters reaches me, completely jumbled. Practically nothing is intelligible, but I assume I am again being summoned to Berlin. I ring up the air command and report that I have been presumably ordered to Berlin and request permission to fly there. The commodore refuses, according to the army bulletin fighting is going on round the Tempelhof aerodrome and he does not know if there is any airfield free of the enemy. He says:

“If you come down in the Russian lines they will chop my head off for having allowed you to start.”

He says he will try to contact Wing Commander von Below immediately by wireless to ask for the correct text of the message and where I can land if at all. For some days I hear nothing, then at 11 P.M. on the 27th April he rings me up to inform me that he has at last made contact with Berlin and that I am to fly there tonight in a Heinkel 111 and land on the wide east-to-west arterial road through Berlin at the point where the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory monuments stand. Niermann will accompany me.

The take off with a Heinkel 111 at night is not altogether easy as our airfield has neither flares round the perimeter nor any other lighting; it is, besides, small and has good-sized hills on one side of it. In order to be able to take off at all we have to partly empty the petrol tank so as to reduce the weight of the aircraft. Naturally this cuts the time we can stay in the air, a serious handicap.

^{He. 111}

We make a start at 1 A.M.—a pitch dark night. We fly over the Sudeten mountains into the battle zone on a north north westerly course. The country below us is illumined eerily by fires, many villages and towns are burning, Germany is in flames. We realize our helplessness to prevent it—but one must not think about it. On the outskirts of Berlin the Soviet searchlights and flak already reach up at us; it is almost impossible to make out the plan of the city as it is enveloped in thick smoke and a dense pall of vapor hangs above it. In some places the incandescence of the fires is so blinding that one cannot pick out the landmarks on the ground, and I just have to stare into the darkness for a while before I can see again, but even so I cannot recognize the east-to-west arterial road. One conflagration next to another, the flash of guns, a nightmare spectacle. My radio operator has made contact with the ground; our first instructions are to wait. That puts the lid on it, especially as we have only so much petrol. After about fifteen minutes a message comes through from Wing Commander von Below that a landing is impossible as the road is under heavy shell fire and the Soviets have already captured the Potsdamer Platz. My instructions are to fly on to Rechlin and to telephone to Berlin from there for further orders.