The Star of Africa by Colin Heaton Anne-Marie Lewis

Author:Colin Heaton, Anne-Marie Lewis [Colin Heaton, Anne-Marie Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Aviation, World War II, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780760343937
Google: edxbwDcvTkMC
Publisher: MBI Publishing Company
Published: 2012-11-12T02:51:13+00:00

CHAPTER 8

A Growing Threat

Telling Marseille that he was grounded was like telling a small child that it could not go out and play. He sometimes acted like one too.

Werner Schroer

AT NEUMANN’S INSISTENCE, MARSEILLE had a stand-down. Neumann knew when a pilot was burning out. Marseille of course argued against it, probably thinking that Homuth wanted him to stand down so that his Gruppenkommandeur could catch up in the scoring, which was probably not the case at all.

With just a couple days off, Marseille was finally in a state of total relaxation, listening to his music as his 3 Staffel was having their aircraft fully serviced. While the mechanics and armorers did their work, the pilots took naps, ate, or in Marseille’s case just listened to jazz and ragtime music. Marseille was one of the lucky men who had a mosquito net, which he had fixed to the entrance of his tent, which also helped keep the dreaded black flies away. They were still enjoying this respite from the action when they were given the word to mount up at 17:00 on June 15.

A few minutes after the alert, Marseille led his flight against a squadron of P-40s from No. 204 Group RAF, although which squadrons were involved is unclear. No. 204 Group acknowledged that four of their fighters were in fact shot down and another written off upon return to base. Marseille scored his kills over El Adem rapidly, at 18:01, 18:02, 18:04, and 18:06, finishing the day with ninety-one victories to his credit. I./JG-27 pilots claimed a total of twelve victories in the running fight, despite only five reported Allied losses. This would appear to be an overclaiming due to the melee that ensued, as more than one pilot probably fired into the same enemy aircraft. Despite the overclaiming, Marseille’s kills were not in dispute, and he claimed an additional fighter damaged but no confirmation.

Werner Schroer also claimed two kills on this mission: “We were in the middle of this large formation, and suddenly I heard someone shout, ‘Here I go!’ and it was in fact Marseille. I rolled over to attack a fighter when Yellow 14 appeared in front of me. I pulled back and up, and as I did, I saw a Curtiss, so I fired and saw smoke coming from the exhaust. He went down, but I could not follow him. There were more around me, but as I rolled again I saw Marseille. He had entered this Lufbery and shot down one, and when I banked back and rolled again, I saw another P-40 going down. When he pulled up and rolled I lost sight of him then, and I managed to fire a leading deflection shot at another P-40, got hits, and saw the canopy fly off. I did not see the pilot bail out, but assumed that was the man’s intention. I could confirm two of Jochen’s victories. I think Pöttgen probably confirmed the others.”1

The next day, June 16, 3 Staffel of I./JG-27

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