The rear gunner reported having sighted the fighter and instructed the Pilot to prepare to ‘corkscrew’ and then gave the order to ‘corkscrew starboard.’ As the Stirling dived, the pilot saw cannon shells passing to port. (This and the subsequent attacks were marked by approximately 3-second bursts from the fighter.) The rear gunner did not fire, and the Stirling climbed to port. As the bomber dived again the fighter made a second and equally unsuccessful attack, to which the rear gunner replied with a half-second burst. He did not fire again, nor did he give any further instructions to the pilot. Nevertheless the pilot continued to corkscrew and a third long burst of cannon shells also missed the Stirling, but the rear turret became unserviceable after this attack, possibly due to damage by machine gun bullets.
Finally, when the pilot had begun to think that the fighter’s ammunition was spent, a fourth attack was made as the Stirling was at the ‘top’ of the corkscrew. (No warning was given by the gunners.) The pilot heard two explosions in the starboard wing, but saw no shells go past. No further attack was made and the pilot heard nothing more of the fighter.
Almost directly after the last attack, the wireless operator told the pilot he could smell petrol, and the mid upper gunner reported a fire in the starboard wing. The pilot tried ‘side-slipping’ in the hope that this might extinguish the fire, but when he looked out he saw a blaze of light coming from the fuselage, which he first thought must be caused by petrol from a starboard tank. He immediately ordered the crew to abandon the aircraft, height then being about 8000 to 9000ft....
A controlled fighter heard operating in the St Trond area from 1943 to 2000 hours claimed a victory at 2000 hours. He was informed by his base that his ‘Sieg Heil’ was south of Brussels. The fighter was operating at 12,000ft, which agrees with the Stirling’s height at the time of the attack....
The pilot believed that ‘corkscrew’ manoeuvres properly directed make it nearly impossible for the fighter to score hits on the bomber. Although he received no instructions from his gunners after the first attack, and the fighter met practically no opposition from the Stirling’s guns, the fighter was able to score hits only on the fourth attempt.
Otto Fries’s next experience of aerial combat six weeks later was so intense it could not have brought him much closer to his quarry without collision. His clash with a Lancaster from Col’s 115 Squadron returning from bombing Berlin on 29 December 1943 was a display verging on stunt flying that belied the bulk of the four-engined bomber and strained Otto’s every sinew. It all started unpromisingly when he took off in foul weather and was deployed well away from the estimated track of the bomber stream, far to the north of St Trond. His fighter was one of only two in his squadron to take off, while the group positioned in the bombers’ path was grounded by the weather. With ground temperature at freezing point and cloud below 80 metres, the prospects for success looked as poor as the visibility as he cleared the runway at 8.42p.m. Added to that, a heavy pea soup for lunch and an evening meal full of onions had brewed up to make Otto acutely uncomfortable in his strapped-in confinement.
At exactly 10p.m. he heard the distraction he needed – a bearing from ground control guiding him onto an approaching bomber. Otto swung the Messerschmitt around to stalk the bomber from astern. Fred quickly picked up the Zacken – squiggles – in his radar windows, indicating a target 3 kilometres ahead and flying at the unusually high altitude of 6000 metres – at least a kilometre higher than normal for a bomber. When Otto was 700 metres behind the position indicated on the radar he slowed his approach. Only a thin layer of mist, as indistinct as a silvery fold in dark velvet, delineated the horizon from the star canopy that enclosed him. At a distance of 300 metres he could just pick out the barely perceptible rear profile of a Lancaster’s wings, with its fuselage and four engines, which emitted a crimson glow from their exhausts. At 10.05p.m. he closed to 150 metres for the kill.
Just as Otto was about to attack, the bomber flipped off to starboard, crossing through the Messerschmitt’s gunsight as it did so. Otto fired on reflex and, as he did so, the rear gunner shot a stream of fire laced with tracer back in his direction. Because of the evasive action of the Lancaster, however, this answering fire arced harmlessly into the darkness like an uncontrolled garden hose spraying droplets of light. Otto reported the contact to ground control. ‘Barabbas from Eagle 98 – Pauke – we’re staying on the ball.’
‘Viktor, understood.’
Otto wrenched the throttle lever back to reduce revs as he plunged the Messerschmitt to starboard to follow the Lancaster’s steep dive.
‘Keep an eye on the speedo, Fred, and let me know if we start to red-line. I have to keep my eyes glued to the lad in front.’
The Lancaster began ‘corkscrewing’ – weaving and see-sawing – trying to shake off its pursuer as it plunged towards the cloud cover. Otto, determined to follow the bomber’s every move, flung the Messerschmitt with complete disregard for his Bordfunker and gunner behind him in the long cockpit. He was oblivious to their shrieks as the gunner, perched on a flip-down seat without a harness, floated up against the perspex canopy, his ammunition belts snaking weightless about him, then was rammed back against the floor as Otto pulled out sharply to follow the bomber upwards again. In a desperate save-or-lose-all manoeuvre, the bomber pilot broke from the corkscrewing action and suddenly tipped into a vertical dive to reach the cloud cover. Otto stuck to him, provoking a note of panic in Fred’s response. ‘Are you mad? You’re pushing it past 700 Kah-Ems!’ The speedo was already well beyond the red-line reading that showed dangerous strain was being exerted on the wings.
No sooner had the Lancaster dived straight down than it arrested its fall and roller-coasted back into an almost vertical climb. Otto rode the course like a bronco, but the audacity of the bomber’s manoeuvre so threw him that his reaction brought the two aircraft almost to a collision, the bomber sliding only metres above him as Otto continued on his downward trajectory, then sought to fasten the Messerschmitt back onto the bomber’s course. The bomber pilot had the advantage of surprise, but Otto’s aircraft was faster and more agile – though not enough to allow him a clear shot. Otto could think of only one way to seize the initiative: to anticipate the very instant the bomber teetered in its turn and to fire at that point. Otto attuned himself to the bomber’s rhythm, hung back to head off the next scything turn, then let loose a burst into its port wing – a hit, but no flames and the rear gunner answered with a salvo, again thrown wide by his aircraft’s careering movement.
The seven minutes this uneven duel lasted left Otto exhausted and boiling in his flying suit. But the Lancaster pilot continued to throw the larger craft around the sky like a toy, though the low cloud cover that had kept so much of the night fighter force grounded now also meant the bomber had some distance still to dive before finding sanctuary. Otto unleashed a third burst, this time into the starboard wing and causing the inner engine immediately to glow with flame and to trail a thick train of smoke. ‘22.14 hours – altitude 3300 metres – you’ve got your teeth into him now!’ said Fred. The bomber at this point stopped weaving and made for the clouds below. Otto closed the distance until he was so close he could feel from his own vibrating wings that he was in the Lancaster’s slipstream. He fired a short burst into the starboard wing, between the engines, and saw the detonations explode into flame: he had probably ignited the fuel tanks. Otto tipped the Messerschmitt off to port and watched the stricken bomber cartwheel over its starboard wing and comet until swallowed by the cloud. Shortly afterwards the cloud layer pulsed with a sudden brightness as the bomber exploded. Fred intoned the official rites – ‘For the report, altitude 2800 metres, time 22.16 hours. Congratulations’ – and added, ‘But that was one tough nut!’
As Otto went through the formalities with ground control, he noticed for the first time that his arms and legs were shaking and he was drenched in sweat. He had never before witnessed such masterful acrobatics from such a large aircraft. The conditions for
landing were no better than when he had taken off, so he had to rely purely on instruments, touching down perfectly as if on the calmest and clearest of days. It was 10.55p.m. He had been locked in an intense struggle with the Lancaster for 11 minutes and it had taken a further 24 minutes to return to this point. When he climbed out of the cockpit Otto could hardly stand because his knees were trembling so violently.
The Lancaster pilot and two crewmen survived, one making it back to England; the remaining four on board died and lie buried in a churchyard near where the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany come together.[2] Otto Fries seldom learned the fate of the airmen he shot down. When I provided him with the details of several of the kills credited to him and Fred Staffa, he was particularly keen to learn how many of their crew had escaped. By the time that encounter took place in December 1943, Otto had already survived being shot down once, and was to have his life saved by parachute three more times, as the tables were turned against the Luftwaffe.
CHAPTER 10
THE HUNTER AS TARGET
The Raf led the Counter-Charge against the German night fighters in a superb, wooden warhorse – the twin-engined Mosquito fighter-bomber. Otto fell prey twice, possibly three times, to attacks by Mosquitoes. The first such encounter, in May 1944, left him badly injured. His squadron had just taken delivery of the revolutionary Heinkel HE219 Uhu, or owl, the best night fighter Germany produced. Otto had recently been appointed technical officer responsible for ensuring the squadron remained in good flying order, so was given the job of testing the new plane. By then thoroughly attuned to the ME110, he did not take immediately to the new HE219. One of the first aircraft to sit forward on a nose wheel, the Heinkel made Otto feel he was pitched forward, almost off balance. Instead of stepping up onto the wing and pulling himself into the cockpit, he scaled a tall ladder that had to be flipped end-over itself, to get into the Heinkel. Once inside, the two crew settled themselves into the world’s first ejector seats, needed to fire the pilot and Bordfunker well clear if baling out, so they would not risk jumping straight into the propellers on the wings mounted high and behind the cabin.
On that first trial flight on 19 May 1944, Otto had put the new plane through its paces in the early hours of the morning, running through the instrumentation routines and, most important, testing how the more sluggish aircraft reacted when thrown about the sky as if during combat. He had just settled on a leisurely course back for base when suddenly crashing and splintering rent the night and the port motor erupted in flames.
‘Enemy night fighter!’ Fred yelled. On reflex, Otto speared the Heinkel steeply down to starboard and shut off the fuel cocks for the burning port engine, hoping to starve the flames of fuel. Despite his efforts to feather, then shut down, the burning engine, it continued to sputter like a giant sparkler. Then the flames swelled more brightly to blaze with the intensity of a rocket’s after-burner. The safety of cloud cover lay well below, seemingly beyond reach as a potential refuge. But, puzzlingly, the unseen enemy night fighter – was it a Mosquito? – had not followed through on the attack.
Otto told Fred he was going to try to make it back to base, but would jettison the canopy in case they had to crash land and make a hurried exit. Otto tried to release the front half of the canopy, expecting it to flip up back on its hinge like a Messerschmitt’s and to be torn free by the slipstream. Instead, it telescoped back on the rear section, but with such suddenness that Otto, his seat raised to allow him to test the gunsight, took a tremendous blow to the forehead, which knocked him senseless and opened up a gushing cut along his hairline. He slumped forward, pushing the Y-shaped yoke forward and sending the Heinkel into a steep dive. Fred, seated back to back with the pilot, yelled in alarm and glanced back in horror to see his skipper obliviously steering them to their destruction. In the panicked few seconds in which Fred’s shouting failed to rouse his long-time pilot and friend, the Bordfunker concluded the only option was to catapult himself from the plummeting Heinkel. He lifted the safety flap on the seat release and pushed the button to fire the high-pressure ejector canisters. In the panic and confusion, however, Fred opened his parachute before releasing his seat harness, so that the parachute stays bound him to the seat base. He floated upside down to strike the ground headfirst at a speed of 5 metres a second.
Otto, meanwhile, was becoming groggily aware that he urgently needed to arrest the plane’s headlong plunge, which had now reached a speed that threatened to tear the wings off. He hooked a forearm under each horn of the yoke and pulled back with all his strength. The Heinkel responded, scooping out of its dive and re-emerging above the cloud layer. Otto almost blacked out again as the centrifugal forces drained the blood from his head. His returning senses registered blood dripping from his nose and chin. He shouted to Fred, then realised the Bordfunker’s compartment was empty. He could hardly see, let alone clear his head enough to attempt an emergency landing. But how to get out? With a mixture of instinct, terror and anger at what a stupid way this would be to die, Otto groped around in the blackness of the cabin. He was aware the instrumentation differed from the Messerschmitt’s, but had no grasp of what he needed to do to save himself. He tried one button, but this merely slid the armour-plated windscreen cover into place; another lowered the undercarriage, then the flaps, causing the plane to slow and jump up, as if it had plunged into a wool bale.
Desperation battled with a determination to keep a cool head, though his forehead was on fire. With great effort he mastered his panic, and remembered a torch on a lanyard around his neck. Wiping the blood from his eyes again and probing the torch’s beam around the cabin, he took in, on his right console, the safety flap covering the release rod for his ejector seat. Otto hinged it back and thumped the activation rod with all the strength he could muster. A bursting sound accompanied the snapping of his chin onto his chest as the pressure canisters blasted him into the night air. He unclasped his harness and shed the seat, but continued to free-fall until he felt the moisture of the cloud layer pressing on his hands and face, a sign he was low enough to breathe without oxygen. His brain was still spinning inside his burning skull, and as he pulled his rip-cord and started to pendulate back and forth under his parachute canopy he suddenly threw up violently into the dark void below. He could see nothing in the blackness beneath him. He remembered the flare pistol strapped firmly to his right leg, the cartridges in a left pocket of his flying trousers. He loaded and fired three flares in quick succession, lighting up the scene below. As he repeatedly wiped the blood from his eyes he could make out a road winding through a small village surrounded by paddocks. A light wind pushed him closer to them as he floated earthwards.
The soft earth of the paddock partially cushioned the shock of hitting the ground, but the parachute canopy engulfed him, and he had to struggle to free himself from the cloying net of silk and tangled guy lines. Once he had fought his way out, Otto gave thanks for small mercies as he saw he had come down right next to a huge cow pat. His forehead burned with a hellish intensity, and the blood from the wound continued to run off his nose, chin and earlobes. His collar had become a sticky swab. Dizzy, feeling wretched, he tried to stand, but fell several times before he succeeded, with a profound effort, in regaining his feet. Otto gathered his parachute and set off in search of help, clasping the unruly bundle before him. He staggered across the paddocks, tripping over fences and stumbling once into a shallow, water-filled ditch. He had to overcome an urge just to pillow himself in the parachute and sleep. Finally Otto reached the fence to a farmhouse. He groped his way along the wire until he found an opening, then staggered through an open yard between woodpiles till he came up against a shoulder-high wall, beyond which ran the village road. He threw his bunched-up parachute over onto the road and tried to climb over, but lost his balance and tumbled headfirst to the ground, the parachute cushioning his fall.
He scraped up the bundle and staggered along the road, crying for help. No signs of life. He made his way to a church, pushed op
en the door and succumbed to an overwhelming need to rest. Under a ghostly light hovering through the stained glass windows beyond the altar he curled up in his parachute on a pew and fell asleep. The pain of his wound woke him. He saw his continued bleeding had run down to leave a slick on the pew, then pooled on the floor. Some habitual sense of decorum prompted him to try to wipe up the mess with the parachute, but this just smeared it over a wider area. He left the church and continued down the street, bleating for help. A recurring blackness before his eyes caused him to fall, but his thinking remained clear enough to know his need of medical treatment was becoming more urgent the more blood he lost.
A large, affluent-looking house lay ahead. Surely it would have a telephone. Otto made his way to the door and rapped on the knocker. Nothing stirred. In growing frustration he pummelled the door with both fists, but to no avail. He remembered his pistol and drew it from its holster, grasped the barrel and hammered on the door with its grip. Still not so much as a shuffle could be heard inside. In sudden rage he shouted, ‘Damn you, I need a telephone!’ He released the pistol’s safety catch, cocked the weapon and was about to fire at the lock to blast it open when a sound froze him – the ‘ting-ting-ting’ of a railway crossing. With a renewed fierceness of purpose he struggled towards the bells and, with any luck, a stationmaster’s hut. A train rushed past and he saw in the stillness of its wake a hut beyond the tracks – now just a few more steps. He swayed in the open doorway and registered the shock on the face of the Dutch stationmaster as he took in Otto’s bloody mess of a face and the streaking from his soaking collar. ‘I’m a German pilot – shot down – I need a doctor.’ Otto slumped to the ground unconscious.
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 12