Nevertheless, despite themselves, the authorities gained a highly effective weapon for the Fatherland.
Effective he might ultimately have become, but his career almost ended before it began. In early August 1940 he was part of a raiding force of Heinkel He 111s, which was attacked by fighters shortly after crossing the English coast near Ipswich. The escorting Messerschmitt Me 110s were engaged by a squadron of Spitfires and had consequently been too busy defending themselves to pay heed to their charges. This left the way open for two squadrons of Hurricanes to attack the loaded, lumbering bombers. Warned by radar and with the sun on their backs, the British fighters dived on the Heinkels with a cold ferocity that split their tight defensive formation.
Two Hurricanes latched onto Wenck and proceeded to use their combined firepower of sixteen Brownings to cut him to pieces. Their first pass killed his mid-upper-gunner and the wireless operator. Their second killed the navigator, destroyed half the instrument panel and put a piece of 303 bullet into his left thigh.
In desperation he had flung the Heinkel downward, twisting and turning in a vain effort to elude his tormentors. It was to no avail, yet somehow, for the next seven or eight minutes he managed to keep the big bomber out of their reach. He yelled for the belly gunner to take over the mid-upper defensive position and then, using every ounce of his prodigious skill proceeded to manoeuvre his aircraft around every obstacle he could find. Tall trees and buildings, electricity pylons and hills were all aimed for and dodged by the barest margin.
The British pilots were faced with a difficult proposition. If they stayed above the Heinkel and tried to dive down on him, there was a chance that they might lose him when they pulled back into a climb, or turned away. If they followed him they could only do so line astern since at that height it was impossible to conduct a co-ordinated attack from two directions. The line astern route also meant only one aircraft at a time could bring its guns to bear. This was made even worse because, for much of the time, they had to fly defensively in case they ran into one of the obstructions that Wenck cleverly placed in their path.
The upshot was that both Hurricanes finally ran out of ammunition. With their fuel also running low, much to their chagrin, they had to disengage and leave the battered German bomber to head back out across the English Channel.
Exhausted, weak from loss of blood and with no navigator to guide him, Wenck nursed his sick aircraft back to his base in Northern France. Just before he reached the coast one engine gave up and he was forced to struggle the remaining eighty kilometres back to the aerodrome.
Despite this added handicap he landed without further incident and managed to taxi to the dispersals area. Later, while in hospital, the squadron adjutant informed him that his ground crew had counted 143 bullet holes in his plane.
That sortie saw an end to his part in the Battle of Britain.
The Hurricanes had decimated his squadron, destroying eight aircraft and damaging to varying degrees the remainder. On being repaired the aircraft were attached to another squadron, which shared the airfield and were sent back into the fray. By the end of the week only two of the original crews were left. The rest were either dead or prisoners-of-war.
At any rate, the squadron had virtually ceased to exist, so the survivors were sent back to Germany to form the nucleus of a new Kampfgeschwader.
In the meantime Wenck was flat on his back. The loss of blood had so weakened his system that he contracted pneumonia and was forced to stay in hospital for just over two weeks. He was then sent back to Germany for a month’s rest and recuperation. This was followed by six weeks attached to an operational training unit helping new pilots gain experience on more advanced aircraft.
The second day of 1941 saw him once again in the cockpit of an operational Heinkel He 111. This time he was bound for an airfield just outside Vienna. The first half of the year meant the Yugoslav and Greek campaigns, which gave him the necessary combat experience and sharp edge to enable him to survive when the Luftwaffe took on the might of Russia.
The following eighteen months were a kaleidoscope of events that were the everyday life for a bomber pilot on the Russian Front. He lost count of the number of airfields he flew from and the number of sorties he engaged in. Only the terse, truncated reports in his log book and odd photograph or two helped him recall the events that had taken place. That was until Stalingrad.
The winter of 1942/43, the second their forces had spent in Russia, became a nightmare. The Germans, after their success of 1942, were now so deep inside Russia that the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe were severely stretched to hold what they had gained, let alone keep going on the offensive. Yet, this is what they were forced to do. The Red Army, despite the terrible battering it had suffered, was far from defeated and was quickly building its strength. The sheer size of the country meant the Russian forces could retreat and retreat until the exhausted Axis forces outran their supply lines and were too stretched to continue.
Like most bomber squadrons, Wenck’s was forced to alternate between flying operational bombing missions against the Russian forces that had surrounded General von Paulus’s troops in Stalingrad, and supplying the beleaguered garrison from the air. More than 330,000 men from two German and two Rumanian armies were trapped and Reichsmarschall Göring ordered the Luftwaffe to keep them supplied from the air. It was an impossible task.
By the time von Paulus’s V1 Army finally capitulated on 2 February 1943, Wenck and what remained of his squadron were exhausted. Short of equipment, tired beyond reason and with their morale beginning to suffer, they were temporarily withdrawn from the front.
It was at this time when Wenck’s star began to ascend. Up to that point he was regarded as a brilliant pilot with a great deal of luck. His record, though, was laced with incidents of insubordination and a history of doing things his own way. The former, although minor in nature had hindered his promotion, but the latter had undoubtedly saved his life.
Wenck’s rest lasted all of five days. He had spent the entire time sleeping, so when he was ordered to join a new squadron there was at least a veneer of calm and strength over the previous week’s exhaustion.
His new squadron was Fern-Kampfgeschwader 50, which had been operating the new Heinkel He 177 Greif bomber from Zaporozhe on transport missions to Stalingrad.
Though very advanced and with a good performance, the Greif was a major disappointment to the German Air Force. Conceived as a long-range bomber it suffered a protracted gestation period and an unenviable reputation for unreliability and for catching fire. Its propensity to ignite was so bad that it gained the nickname Luftwaffenfeuerzeug, or the Luftwaffe’s petrol lighter. The reason for this was its complicated power units. In order to save drag and increase manoeuvrability, the German designer gave the aircraft coupled engines – two liquid-cooled engines mounted side-by-side on each wing with a single gear case connecting the two crank cases and the two crankshaft pinions driving a single airscrew shaft. This arrangement had a propensity to overheat and boil its oil. The engine’s connecting rod bearings would then disintegrate with a fire the subsequent result.
Despite these problems the Greif was fast, heavily armed and with a very long range, and it was the latter that gave him the vast experience that would be so valuable in the flight to America and later, in his plans with Schonewille.
On joining FKG 50 Wenck discovered that some of the giant bombers, as well as having been used as transport aircraft, had been modified in the field with a fifty-millimetre BK 5 anti tank gun mounted in the ventral gondola. Thus armed, they had been used as a ground attack aircraft in between transport duties.
To Wenck it was a waste of a fine aircraft. Although he had never flown the Greif, or any other multi-engined plane of similar size, the conversion took less than a week and his squadron commander quickly realised Kapitän Wenck was undoubtedly a natural.
Never reticent about putting his ideas forward, the new recruit suggested the plane was being wasted and why
was it not being used for what it had been intended. The answer was if Wenck could come up with a proper strategy and a suitable target then he could have the honour of leading the first raid.
Wenck’s squadron commander, a dour man, obviously recognised some peculiar qualities in this newest recruit and his comments were not meant to be as sardonic as they appeared.
Wenck spent two days with German intelligence choosing suitable targets deep inside Russia, but his first mission almost never went ahead. With the spring thaw approaching and the German’s reeling from their losses at Stalingrad, the Red Army went on the offensive, pushing the Axis forces back towards the Dniepr River. By the middle of February they had recovered Kharkov and had moved as far east as Novomoskovsk. The Luftwaffe High Command faced with the Russian steamroller was forced to think tactically rather than strategically. All aircraft were needed to attack the build-up of Russian troops rather than hit targets far behind the lines.
Nevertheless Wenck, backed up by his squadron commander and several key intelligence experts, gave a very detailed written submission explaining how even a series of small raids deep inside Russia would, quite apart from damaging important factories and halting their production, cause vital fighter aircraft to be pulled back from the front. Reluctantly and a little dubiously, the High Command gave him permission to assemble a raiding force of no more than six aircraft and ordered him to succeed, or else.
On 20 February 1943, the Wehrmacht under General von Manstein began a major counter attack to not only stabilise the front but to also throw the Red Army off guard and re-capture territory. That same night Wenck took off with three other Heinkel He 177s from an airfield just north of Orel, which in turn was some 200 kilometres north of Kursk. His destination was a factory complex at Ufa, deep in the Ural Mountains.
At the time Ufa was almost 1,500 kilometres from the front and had never seen a German aircraft let alone a force of four German heavy bombers. The Junkers JU 86P high altitude reconnaissance plane that had made two photographic missions over the complex late in January had never even been heard, let alone seen.
Wenck and his raiders reached the town in the soft dawn of the winter’s early morning light and found their target quite easily. Between them they dropped 9,000 kilograms of bombs on the factories from a low height, completely destroying one and severely damaging a second. They returned to base without incident.
The following night, again with four aircraft. Wenck returned to Ufa, but this time the target was covered with fog forcing them to drop their bombs blind. On the return journey one of the Greifs suffered engine failure and caught fire. After a short struggle to stay in the air, it turned, lost height and cart-wheeled into the ground near the town of Penza. There were no parachutes.
The third raid was aborted when another two Greifs caught fire, one crashing with the loss of its entire crew and the second just managing to stagger back to base.
Two days later Wenck tried something even more ambitious. Just after three in the morning his heavily loaded bomber staggered into the air heading for the town of Sverdlovsk in the northern Urals, a distance of almost 1,700 kilometres. His target was a ball-bearing factory. Although this time his offensive load was small because of the need to carry as much petrol as possible, his bomb aimer managed to land two 500 kilogram projectiles right in the middle of the complex.
The return, however, was not as easy. Some 300 kilometres from the front the starboard engine broke. Luckily, this time the fire extinguishers worked and there were no flames. With engine temperatures rising on the two port engines Wenck had to throttle back to stop them also failing. The crew were forced to jettison as much loose equipment they could lay their hands on in order to save weight. Oxygen bottles, ammunition, some of the guns and some fittings were all thrown overboard. It was in this weakened state that the Russian fighters found them. The three Loavochkinn 5 fighters managed two passes and were setting themselves up for the kill when some FW 190s arrived. Before being rescued half of Wenck’s crew were either killed or wounded. Despite this, he managed to bring the badly damaged plane back to its home base.
It was the last long-range Russian raid undertaken by him. Although it had been a strategic success and the German propaganda machine played it up for all it was worth, the Luftwaffe High Command didn’t have the resources, the technical expertise or the will to mount further raids of this type in Russia. All their energies were taken up by providing their hard pressed army with effective ground support on the front-line.
At any rate, Wenck was vindicated and lionised for his skill and bravery. The subsequent Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross was presented personally by Hermann Göring. At the same time his far-sighted attitude was also noticed and on March 11 he was transferred back to Germany to begin testing some of Germany’s secret aircraft including the big Junkers 390.
While Schonewille ruminated on his brother’s service record the airman lit a cigarette, pushed his cap back on his head, swivelled around in his chair and insolently surveyed the other guests.
Catching the eye of a pretty girl, he winked and then smiled as her middle-aged escort scowled in return. The exchange made the SS officer uncomfortable and again he wondered whether he had chosen the right place for their meeting. His brother’s decoration and haughty manner were like a magnet and they were the centre of attention. For a moment he felt like telling his younger brother to behave, but wisely thought better of it.
The first course was a potato and leek soup served with some half-decent bread. Faced with a cure for his appetite, Peter Wenck gave up ogling the girls and after a while the surrounding people lost interest in them, although a few women glanced their way every so often. Schonewille began to relax.
When the soup was finished, Wenck once more began to question Schonewille.
“You were saying something about why I am back in dear old Berlin?”
Schonewille glanced around before speaking, his voice low.
Wenck noticed the look and also lowered his voice. “Well, what’s it about then?”
Schonewille hesitated. Now that it had come to the crunch he was not sure how to start the conversation. He was saved for a moment by the waiter who appeared at their table and refilled their glasses. He had scarcely walked away when the main course arrived. Schonewille could never remember having been served so quickly and guessed the Knight’s Cross was the cause for this solicitous and rapid service.
The urge to eat was stronger than his curiosity and Wenck let the matter drop while he tackled his plate. In the meantime, Schonewille gathered his thoughts. When the food was consumed, Schonewille motioned over the waiter and told them they would wait for a while before having their dessert and that they wished to be left in peace. The waiter nodded in understanding and left them alone.
“Before I start I want to ask you one question,” began Schonewille. “Then I will tell you what I am engaged in, or rather what I am planning.” There was a movement at the next table as its occupants got up to leave. Good, thought Schonewille, now there was no chance of them being overheard. He returned his gaze to his brother, cocked his head to one side and lifted his eyebrows in an unspoken question. Wenck nodded his head in return.
“Now then Peter, tell me truthfully. How do you think the war is going?”
Wenck hesitated for a moment, gave a quick furtive look around him and then, speaking quietly, said, “Shit Friedrich, you don’t have to be von Rundstedt to work that out. Unless the Führer pulls something out of his hat, or the Allies and the Russians fall out, I give us six months at the most.”
“If that is the case, brother, what do you intend to do?”
Wenck moodily shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I don’t know, never given it much thought. Just surviving has been my main priority.”
Schonewille chose his words carefully. He explained how he was part of a group of three men who were setting up a false bank account with a view to withdrawing the money when and if it looked li
ke Germany was about to be defeated. He covered the plan in some detail, leaving out only two factors: where the money was coming from and his role in the running of the concentration camps.
For a moment Wenck was silent. Although he tried not to show it he was genuinely surprised. Finally, he enquired as to what his role would be.
“It is simple. I need somebody I can trust to fly the money out of the country and help me plan a suitable destination.”
While he was speaking, Schonewille was carefully surveying the surrounding guests. To his horror he recognised the tall figure of Brigadeführer Emil Grauwitz appear at the bottom of the steps accompanied by another SS officer. The shock must have registered on his face, because his brother immediately asked him what was wrong.
Schonewille shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I want you to leave, now! No, please don’t ask any questions. Just go. And if you can, meet me at my apartment in an hour.”
He hurriedly scribbled down his address on a piece of paper and passed it to Wenck. The air force officer nodded his head, pocketed the address and nonchalantly stood up. He then strode to the stairs. In ten seconds he had disappeared.
His brother took a deep breath and then motioned the waiter over; at the same time glancing over to where Grauwitz and his companion were now seated. The SS brigadier was looking over in his direction, but when Schonewille caught his eye there was no flicker of recognition. After a moment, Grauwitz went back to perusing the menu.
The waiter arrived and Schonewille asked for the bill. Dropping the required number of bank notes on the table, he stood up. As he walked towards the stairs he had to pass quite close to the two men. Obviously, he could not ignore them; that would be suspicious. So he saluted and greeted the general.
Grauwitz nodded, returned Schonewille’s salute and wished him a pleasant evening. Then he turned his attention to his dinner companion. Schonewille escaped up the stairs.
The Reichsbank Robbery Page 9