Luftwaffe Sturmgruppen by John Weal

Author:John Weal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Luftwaffe Sturmgruppen
ISBN: 9781780963556
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2011-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

From the same Fieseler manufacturing block as ‘White 5’ seen in the top photograph on page 76, Hauptmann Moritz’s Sturmbock Wk-Nr. 681382 – complete with ‘blinkers’ – displays IV.(Sturm)/JG 3’s new ‘anonymous’ finish minus the black cowling and white aft fuselage band at Schongau in August 1944

These Sturmböcke of II.(Sturm)/JG 300 were photographed at Holzkirchen in late August 1944 at the start of their new career. The pilot snatching 40 winks in the shadow of ‘White 5’ (above) is Unteroffizier Friedrich Alten, who would go down in this machine (Wk-Nr. 681366) near Kassel on 11 September

Selecting a box of Fortresses temporarily devoid of its close escort of P-51s, the Sturmböcke bored in with all cannon blazing. Honours were almost exactly even – ten B-17s credited to the veteran IV.(Sturm)/JG 3 and nine to the tyros of II.(Sturm)/JG 300. In exchange for these 19 Fortresses (according to US sources this figure is more than double the number of bombers actually shot down, although it is still well below the astronomical 84 claimed by Dahl in his post-war ‘Rammjäger’,which includes seven shared among the six Fw 190s of his Geschwaderstab flight!) the Gefechtsverband lost six pilots killed and two wounded and twelve fighters destroyed. Most of the casualties were suffered by I./JG 300 in dogfights with the escorting P-51s.

After the action, Hauptmann Moritz’s pilots were ordered to land at Frankfurt-Eschborn, where they would remain for the next few days as a precaution against further US raids on targets in the Rhine-Main regions. The Fw 190s of II.(Sturm)/JG 300 landed where they could to refuel before the long flight back to Holzkirchen. One group of about a dozen, red fuel lights already beginning to wink, lobbed down in desperation on a small grass field just to the north of the Moselle, only to discover that it was being used solely for glider training. After a six-hour wait in the hot afternoon sun, a small amount of aviation fuel was trucked in – just enough for the Focke-Wulfs to make the short hop to a nearby fighter base, where they could refuel and re-arm properly.

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