Bf 109 Defence of the Reich Aces by John Weal

Author:John Weal
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Bf 109 Defence of the Reich Aces
ISBN: 9781780963495
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2011-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

Ex-JG 52 eastern front veteran Oberfeldwebel Ernst Süss, seen here (left) with Major Hermann Graf, had been commissioned and appointed Staffelkapitän on 9./JG11 by the time he was shot down by P-38s on 20 December 1943

Not far away another Knight’s Cross-wearing Staffelkapitän, Leutnant Ernst Süss of 9./JG 11, was far less fortunate. He had just brought down one of the bombers’ escorting P-38s near Oldenburg (for victory 68) when his own G-5 was hit by a second Lightning. He managed to bail out, but was allegedly shot in his parachute. Oddly, US sources indicate that the P-38s reported neither a loss nor a claim on this date.

Forty-eight hours later II./JG 11 also lost a Staffelkapitän when 6./JG 11’s Hauptmann Egon Falkensamer was killed in action over the German-Dutch border by P-47s escorting bombers to Osnabrück. Recently returned to his Staffel after a six-month stint instructing, Falkensamer had two ‘heavies’ on his score sheet, both downed in May.

But December 1943 is worthy of mention for two other reasons. On 5 December the long-awaited P-51B Mustang made its operational debut. And on 13 December – for a combined strike against the northern ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Kiel – the Eighth Air Force, for the first time ever, put over 1000 aircraft into the air.

True, the P-51s were a group on loan from the tactical Ninth Air Force, and their mission took them only as far as France. And true, ‘only’ 637 bombers succeeded in attacking their primary targets on 13 December. But the writing was on the wall, and it did not bode well for 1944.

In fact, even before that, the borrowed Mustang group had already participated in all six of the last attacks to be mounted against the Reich in 1943. Due partly to the pilots’ operational inexperience, however, this did not provide the immediate panacea that had – perhaps unfairly – been expected of the P-51B. Although the Mustangs claimed four kills, they lost eight of their own. The first had failed to return from the 11 December raid on Emden, the victim possibly of an attack by 9./JG 11’s Oberfeldwebel Emil Schmelzinger over Holland. Four more went down during the Bremen operation on 20 December. Günther Specht and Hugo Frey of JG 11 were each credited with a P-51 on this date.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.