CHAPTER FIVE
Lechfeld, Germany, May 22, 1943
The Messerschmitt firm was reeling from the backlash of Willy Messerschmitt’s angry accusations of incompetence, and no one was more upset than Woldemar Voigt, the lead designer of the new jet fighter.
Voigt mastered his usually powerful personality, stifling his resentment, as he stood in his cluttered office, head bowed, listening to the balding, jut-jawed Messerschmitt rant about his incompetence and stupidity. Abstractly he thought, ‘This is so unlike Willy,’ for normally he ran a congenial shop, giving his department heads authority to make major decisions. Now he had lost control and was saying things he would regret later.
Only ten months before, the good Dr. Messerschmitt believed he had won the race to build a production jet fighter with the first flight of the Me 262. On the basis of that success, the Reich Air Ministry had decided not to issue contracts for the rival Heinkel He 280 and instead ordered a pre-production series of the 262s, to set the path for mass production.
Since then there had been a series of disasters that was pushing the program to the brink of cancellation. Last August 11, the veteran test pilot Henrich Beauvais had been unable to master Wendel’s takeoff technique. Beauvais had bounded down the field, tail rising, then falling back down, until he plunged off the end of the runway, tore up a cornfield, caught his wingtip on a manure heap, and spun the sole flying prototype into a mass of smoking metal. Fortunately, Beauvais walked away from the crash, but suddenly things were reversed and Heinkel was the only firm with a flyable jet fighter prototype.
Some evil specter seemed to be stalking the program, and only Messerschmitt’s eloquence had persuaded the Reich Air Ministry to continue along and even increase the order to thirty pre-production aircraft. This was a double-edged sword, for while it was a godsend to the program, seemingly ensuring its life, it required the acquisition of many more scarce engineers and hard-to-find machine tools. Messerschmitt’s forceful efforts to get them caused resentment in the Air Ministry’s bureaucracy, and the barely cordial relations created by the 262’s success were destroyed.
It wasn’t till early in 1943 that they had another flyable 262 prototype. It made one successful flight before it crashed, diving straight into the ground after takeoff, killing Wendel’s top assistant, Wilhelm Ostertag.
Messerschmitt’s voice, normally low and measured, now seemed to climb an octave as he sputtered, “And now I find out that we do not have a viable test program! We have one prototype flying now, in May 1943! This is impossible! What am I to tell Milch? He’ll have Heinkel back under contract in an instant when he learns about this.”
Voigt looked up. He had not spoken since Mersser-schmitt had burst into his office, interrupting a staff meeting, ordering everyone out of the room. They were all cowering in the hallway now, listening to Messerschmitt scream, ready to disappear if he left the room.
“Dr. Messerschmitt, please let me talk.” Voight was always soft-spoken and deferential in dealing with Messerschmitt, less so when dealing with his own subordinates.
“No, you listen, Dr. Voigt. The Air Ministry is already demanding changes; they want a tricycle landing gear and they want production speeded up! How can I do this if you’ve allowed all the prototypes to crash?”
It was blatantly unfair, and Fritz Wendel, listening with the others in the hallway, decided to intervene. He eased the door open and walked in uninvited. No one else in the plant would have dared to do so, but he was Messerschmitt’s favorite test pilot and had earned the privilege. Wendel came right to the point.
“Dr. Messerschmitt, Dr. Voigt is not to blame on this. You dictated the number of prototypes to build, and you know very well we have to expect losses; we will crash a dozen of these 262s before we begin to get it right, and you know that better than anyone.”
Embarrassed, knowing Wendel was right, Messerschmitt sputtered and reached his hand out to Voigt’s shoulder.
Wendell went on, “And I can tell you that today is the day that we can get back on track.”
Messerschmitt and Voigt looked at him. Wendel was a brilliant test pilot but hardly a production program expert.
“As of today, after a lot of effort on the shop floor, we have two prototypes ready to fly. Last week, I took the initiative to invite General Galland down to fly one. He is here now, in the operations building, getting briefed on the controls and the systems.” Wendel knew he was in dangerous waters; he had exceeded his authority, going behind Messerschmitt’s back to invite the most admired man in the Luftwaffe down to fly the Me 262.
Messerschmitt literally staggered back to the wall, appalled that Wendel had the temerity to so exceed his authority but realizing at the same instant what an opportunity it was. Adolf Galland was the Luftwaffe’s Inspector General for Fighters. He had shot down nearly one hundred enemy aircraft officially and, it was said, many more that he hadn’t bothered to confirm. He was barred from combat flying because he was so valuable as an organizer and tactician.
Voigt’s heart leaped within him. Wendel had put his career on the line, and everything depended upon Messerschmitt recognizing the value of Galland’s approval. They had always planned to have the veteran ace fly the airplane, but not until later in the year.
Messerschmitt’s engineering mentality was a runaway train evaluating the pluses and minuses of the situation. The great danger was that Galland might crash and be killed in the 262. If that happened, the program was finished. Milch would cancel it and Göring would approve. Messerschmitt himself would probably go to a concentration camp—he had already been threatened with prison. Ah, but if Galland flew the airplane, he would see its value at once, and his approval would set the program in concrete, assuring mass production. And then there was the morale situation to consider; if Messerschmitt refused to allow Galland to fly, he would have to somehow punish Wendel for his impertinence and Voigt would also have to be censured.
Time slowed in Dalí fashion, but within a minute it had become clear to Messerschmitt that Wendel had thrown him a life preserver. This was in fact the only way out of the shortage-of-prototypes problem—and also the embarrassing personal situation he had created by berating Voigt.
“Fritz, I should fire you, but I won’t because this is the only way out. I salute you for your brazen impudence—but don’t think you can do it again. Dr. Voigt, I apologize. I was distraught, and I blamed you for things that I am at least equally to blame for. Now let’s go see if this wunderkind Galland can fly us out of all this trouble.”
All three breathing huge sighs of relief, they walked the two hundred yards to the operations building where the dapper major general sat listening to a group of test pilots and mechanics explain the systems of the 262. Of medium height, with a shock of black hair and a mustache that made Hitler’s look like an eyebrow, he sat smoking his usual big black cigar. He was the only pilot in the Luftwaffe to have his Bf 109 cockpit fitted with an electric cigar lighter and an ashtray. He smoked continuously while flying, removing his oxygen mask to take a drag on one of the cigars that poured in on him as gifts from admirers all over Germany and even from the occupied territories. His aircraft carried his personal insignia, a pugnacious version of Mickey Mouse smoking a big cigar. Galland was also the definitive ladies’ man, with sweethearts at every airfield, many of them so devoted that they followed him from assignment to assignment, creating a tryst-scheduling problem for him.
But he was first and foremost a fighter expert, determined to gain air supremacy for the Luftwaffe, despite its derelict leadership. He had made aviation history during the Battle of Britain when, after a particularly galling speech by Hermann Göring, he was asked by the great man what he wanted in the way of equipment. Galland’s response, “A squadron of Spitfires, Herr Reichsmarschall,” had brought him to within seconds of court-martial, but it also gained him the undying devotion of his comrades.
Galland was a legend who had emerged from the shadow of another hero, his friend a
nd mentor Werner Moelders. They had vied for being the top ace of the Luftwaffe, with Moelders leading by a comfortable margin until he was killed. His death was a total waste, flying back in a Heinkel He 111 to attend the elaborately fraudulent funeral for Ernst Udet. And rumor had it that there was not a crash at all, but that Moelders, a devout Catholic, had been killed because he had protested the brutal Nazi policies used on the Eastern Front, going so far as to refuse to wear his medals.
Moelders’s heir, Galland, had seen the Luftwaffe go from dazzling air superiority in Poland and over France to a stymied force over Great Britain. Then, in the vast reaches of Russia, the Luftwaffe became just a fire brigade, sent to where the danger was greatest, unable to achieve air superiority anywhere except by concentrating its forces in a particular area for a short time. Now it was bowing under the great and growing weight of the Allied bombing campaign. Fighters, vitally needed on the Soviet front, were withdrawn to defend the airspace of the Reich.
For three years he had raged against the shortsightedness of Luftwaffe leaders, who had kept German aircraft plants on a one-shift-per-day basis and never bothered to expand production schedules to match the Allied challenge. The same leaders had stifled new developments so that his units were fighting with primarily the same types they had when the war started while the enemy continually reequipped with new and better aircraft. Worst of all, he had to contend with the haphazard strategy of Göring and other leaders, who spread the Luftwaffe around in bits and pieces, instead of allowing Galland to concentrate an enormous force of fighters to oppose the enemy bombers. He knew if he could put up one thousand fighters on a single mission, he could inflict devastating losses on the incoming American and British bomber units and stop the fearsome growing carnage they executed daily in Germany. Anyone else who spoke out as he did, in the forums he chose, would have long since been court-martialed and sent to Dachau. But Galland was beloved by his subordinates and his position was so secure that not even Göring dared move against him—at least not yet.
Galland listened, his dark eyes dancing, interrupting occasionally only to ask a pertinent question. It was obvious that he knew a great deal, that Wendel and others had been briefing him, and it was equally apparent that his enthusiasm was growing as he learned more. No mathematician, he insisted upon going over and over the equations that translated pounds of thrust into horsepower. It seemed impossible that the relatively small, light Junkers engines could produce what the engineers claimed, the equivalent of 900 kilograms of thrust at sea level, an output that would climb with an increase in speed. When told that the estimated speed of the 262 was about 885 kilometers per hour, Galland smiled. That was 225 kph faster than his Messerschmitt Bf 109, and he frankly doubted such a leap forward to be possible.
He sat there, impassive, going over the figures, then finally nodded, for even if the Messerschmitt and Junkers engineers were wildly optimistic, by as much as 50 percent, it was still a fantastic step forward. And if they were accurate—and in his heart he hoped they were; he knew their work—the results would be utterly sensational.
The last Junkers man to speak almost as an aside mentioned that the performance figures would be obtained even if low-quality diesel fuel was used instead of aviation gasoline, and Galland stood up. He had heard this before, but he wanted clarification and got a long exposition on the combustion factors that allowed diesel oil to produce the power they estimated. He stood for a moment, silent. This was a key factor. Even if the performance estimates all were all wrong, it might still be important enough to insist that the jet go into production. Germany was already desperately short of the rotgut eighty-seven-octane fuel that was the standard issue. Moreover, there were larger piston engines being planned, and they would certainly require higher-octane fuels that were going to be virtually impossible to obtain.
At last he slapped his hand down on the desk and said, “Let’s go. I’m ready. Roll that Turbo out and let me try it.”
A Mercedes staff car drove them to the end of the runway where two beautifully prepared aircraft, the Me 262V3 and V4, waited. Both were washed and polished and Wendel climbed into the first aircraft, which had flown almost twenty times in the last three weeks. Galland had been carefully briefed on the toe-tapping takeoff technique Wendel had developed and watched closely as the Messerschmitt test pilot took off, sending the fighter hurtling down the runway nose high, then at the 800-meter mark tapping the brakes, rotating the nose down, and gathering sufficient speed for flight.
Wendel put on a dazzling eighteen-minute flying show, demonstrating the speed, roll rate, climb, and slow-flight capabilities of the airplane. While Wendel flew, engine technicians emphasized to Galland how important it was to handle the throttles gently—no jamming them forward as was sometimes necessary in piston engine fighters but rather manipulating them evenly and easily, to avoid stalling or overheating the engines.
Wendel landed with the usual spectacular but harmless sheets of trailing flame from fuel pooled in the nacelles. While the airplane was being refueled and inspected, he talked to Galland again about the takeoff technique. It was imperative to bring the engines up to speed slowly and together; if one engine failed at takeoff speed, it would spin the aircraft to one side, careening it off the runway and probably causing a catastrophic crash.
Galland’s smoke timing had been perfect; he ground the stump of the big black cigar into the ground, clambered up into the cockpit, and sat, going over the instruments while Wendel talked him through starting the first engine. It seemed to start normally enough, and Wendel leaped down, leaving Galland to start the second. At that moment the first engine burst into flames. Unaware, Galland kept looking at the throttle quadrant, concentrating on a smooth start of the second engine. A mechanic leaped on the wing, pounded Galland on the shoulder, and pointed to the fire. With his long experience in emergencies, it took Galland only seconds to disconnect his seat belt and parachute and dive over the side, hitting the ground in a rolling motion, before being up and running to where the others was waiting. A fire crew swarmed over the burning engine, blanketing the flames with their fire extinguishers.
Galland was unshaken by the incident. He understood how temperamental jet engines were and that over time these would be more reliable and less prone to catching fire. He signaled impatiently to Willy Messerschmitt that he would fly the other aircraft.
Both engines of the Messerschmitt Me 262V4 started uneventfully, and Galland eased it out to the runway, unable to see straight ahead over the long nose, S-turning to make sure he didn’t taxi into something. He lined up exactly in the middle of the runway, with his tail wheel resting on the lip of the asphalt. Galland advanced the throttles carefully, steering with the brakes at first, then, as the rudder became effective, with the rudder pedals. As speed gathered he was struck by the comparative silence, the lack of torque, and the slow but rapidly building acceleration. At precisely 180 kph he tapped the brakes, the nose leaned down, the elevators caught the air, and seconds later he was airborne, climbing faster than he ever had before. Galland was not poetic, but he had an instant mental image of a flight of angels pushing the airplane in its headlong climb.
He saw at once that the Me 262 was a war-winning weapon, far superior to anything the enemy had, able to take on any Allied fighter. A flight of four 262s could destroy much of a bomber formation in a single pass. As he flew, he tested the airplane’s capability, banking it ever more steeply, diving and climbing, carefully adjusting the power, and always keeping his eye on the rapidly declining fuel gauges.
To the west of the field he spotted a larger airplane and immediately headed for it. In less than a minute he discerned that it was one of Messerschmitt’s other advanced projects, the four-engine Me 264, the so-called Amerika Bomber. The huge aircraft was on a routine test flight near the field, and Galland promptly climbed to carry out a classic fighter attack, moving from high in the rear to below and past the “target.”
He flew the same pattern he mi
ght have flown in his 109 fighter and found that he whipped by the bomber so swiftly that he wouldn’t have had time to fire his guns. He realized that just a few seconds of miscalculation might have seen him fly not by but into the Me 264, thus effectively smashing two important test programs—and himself—in one ill-considered pass.
Sobered by the experience, he flew back to the field, made a conservative pattern, and landed, convinced that in the 262 Germany had found a way to win the air war. Now all he had to do was win a battle with the Air Ministry and convince them to build enough of the 262s.
June 7, 1943, Berlin
Fritz Obermyer had declined to fly to the meeting in Berlin, though Ernst Heinkel himself had offered him a seat in one of the two comfortably equipped He 111s making the short trip. Obermyer preferred to travel by train, as crowded as they were. Even the uncertain schedules, always subject to delays by bombings, had an advantage, providing him an excuse to come up a day early to be sure he was on time. He had faced his share of dangers on the Western Front during the war and again during the decade of street fighting that had preceded Hitler’s accession to power in 1933—he refused to accept the risk of flying when he could. Besides, there was no room on the plane for Müller, and where Obermyer went, Müller followed.
Although there were continual calls from the party and the government to reduce the number of conferences during wartime, they continued to proliferate, and this one, a review board for jet engines and aircraft, was probably more legitimate than most. It had been called by his old Friekorps commander, Erhard Milch, who never wasted anyone’s time. He had made Deutsche Luft Hansa a financial success and then became one of the top leaders of the Luftwaffe. An organizational genius, he was succeeding exactly where Udet had failed, rationalizing the industry, concentrating on fewer types, and insisting that production be increased. Göring was jealous of how well Milch performed and would gladly have gotten rid of him if he had dared. But Milch had Hitler’s confidence, and that meant Göring could not do as he usually did, hammer down anyone who he felt threatened his position. Milch was cordially disliked by many of the top Luftwaffe generals, men who spent long years in the lower ranks after the Versailles Treaty had destroyed the German armed forces. They regarded him as a civilian and resented his meteoric progress. He had been a captain in 1918, entered the Luftwaffe with the rank of major general in 1934, and by July 1940 had been promoted to field marshal.
Roaring Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age Page 9