Servants of Evil: Voices From Hitler's Army by Bob Carruthers

Author:Bob Carruthers [Carruthers, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: new
ISBN: 9781906783532
Amazon: 1781591393
Publisher: Coda Books Ltd.
Published: 2016-11-06T04:00:00+00:00

Karl Born, Luftwaffe pilot. “The Russian air force was very bad. They hurled all sorts of stuff down, stones, bits of iron. It was all very primitive.”

Karl Born had a very poor opinion of the Russian air force.

‘It was very bad. The Russian pilots were cowards. They used to turn away when we came on the scene. They never attacked us, except once when we were in a Fieseler Storch. But we were able to run out the landing flaps and reduce speed, so the Russian shot past us before he could pull the trigger. The closer we were to the ground, the worse it was for him, because he had a large turning circle and couldn’t follow us any more.

‘There was one Russian aircraft we came to know very well. We called it the ‘sewing machine’. It was an ancient double-decker which always arrived at night and hurled all sorts of stuff down, stones, bits of iron. It was all very primitive.’

Command of the air enabled the Ju-87 Stukas to fulfil their traditional role as tactical support for the German ground forces. Horst Ramstetter spent three years in Russia piloting dive-bombers.

‘At the beginning of the Russian campaign, I was immediately sent into action in the last open-cockpit biplane, the Henschel-123, the forerunner of the Ju-87 Stuka. The Hs-123 had an engine power of about 900 hp and it was so manoeuvrable that in the pilot’s jargon ‘you could turn it around a lamp post’. It was a robust plane. They shot at me from below through the lower wing into the upper wing, there was a hole that I could almost crawl through and the thing still kept flying. I think you’d have to take the wings off then it would stop flying, and not before. It was that robust.’

Ramstetter flew missions that seemed to take him back to a form of warfare from the past.

‘We flew missions against mounted units at the beginning of the war in Russia. Just imagine that, the Cossacks. Horse drawn. I was up in the Hs-123 when I saw some galloping horses and riders. One of them looked around and I saw his eyes, full of fear. I couldn’t fire. I couldn’t fire. I couldn’t fire at the enemy. He suddenly became a human being for me. Why? In war, it’s either you or me, that’s the rule for every soldier the world over, either you or me and whoever is faster, he survives longer. But I couldn’t fire, not that time.’

‘I flew 300 missions in the Hs-123, in the southern sector in Russia. Early on, I never got further north than Kiev in the Ukraine, but later, I flew over Stalingrad, supporting the ground troops. Afterwards, I was sent on missions all over Russia as a fighter bomber. But the Hs-123 was very ancient. So I was retrained on the Fw-190.’

Alfred Wagner was very enthusiastic about the Fw-190, which was introduced into the Luftwaffe after 1941 as a replacement for the Me-109s.

‘The Fw-190 was much more manoeuvrable in the air than many other aircraft.

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