We race down towards her; slowly she grows to a gigantic size. All their A.A. guns are now directed at us. Now nothing matters but our target, our objective; if we achieve our task it will save our brothers in arms on the ground much bloodshed. But what is happening? Steen's aircraft suddenly leaves mine far behind. He is travelling much faster. Has he after all again retracted his diving brakes in order to get down more quickly? So I do the same. I race after his aircraft going all out. I am right on his tail, travelling much too fast and unable to check my speed. Straight ahead of me I see the horrified face of W.O. Lehmann, Steen's rear-gunner. He expects every second that I shall cut off his tail unit with my propeller and ram him. I increase my diving angle with all the strength I have got- it must surely be 90 degrees- sit tight as if I were sitting on a powder-keg. Shall I graze Steen's aircraft which is right on me or shall I get safely past and down? I streak past him within a hair's breadth. Is this an omen of success? The ship is centered plumb in the middle of my sights. My Ju 87 keeps perfectly steady as I dive; she does not swerve an inch. I have the feeling that to miss is now impossible. Then I see the Marat large as life in front of me. Sailors are running across the deck, carrying ammunition. Now I press the bomb release switch on my stick and pull with all my strength. Can I still manage to pull out? I doubt it, for I am diving without brakes and the height at which I have released my bomb is not more than 900 feet.
The skipper has said when briefing us that the two thousand pounder must not be dropped from lower than 3000 feet as the fragmentation effect of this bomb reaches 3000 feet and to drop it at a lower altitude is to endanger ones aircraft. But now I have forgotten that! I am intent on hitting the Marat. I tug at my stick, without feeling, merely exerting all my strength. My acceleration is too great. I see nothing, my sight is blurred in a momentary blackout, a new experience for me. But if it can be managed at all I must pull out. My head has not yet cleared when I hear Scharnovski's voice: "She is blowing up, sir!"
Now I look out. We are skimming the water at a level of ten or twelve feet and I bank round a little. Yonder lies the Marat below a cloud of smoke rising to 1200 feet; apparently the magazine has exploded. “Congratulations, sir."
Scharnovski is the first. Now there is a babel of congratulations from all the other aircraft over the R/T. From all sides I catch the words: "Good show!" Hold on, surely I recognise the Wing Commander's voice? I am conscious of a pleasant glow of exhilaration such as one feels after a successful athletic feat. Then I fancy that I am looking into the eyes of thousands of grateful infantrymen. Back at low level in the direction of the coast. “Two Russian fighters, sir", reports Scharnovski. "Where are they?" "Chasing us, sir - they are circling round the fleet in their own flak. Cripes! They will both be shot down together by their own flak."
This expletive and, above all, the excitement in Scharnovski's voice are something quite new to me. This has never happened before. We fly on a level with the concrete blocks on which A.A. guns have also been posted. We could almost knock the Russian crews off them with our wings. They are still firing at our comrades who are now attacking the other ships. Then for a moment there is nothing visible through the pall of smoke rising from the Marat. The din down below on the surface of the water must be terrific, for it is not until now that a few flak crews spot my aircraft as it roars close past them. Then they swivel their guns and fire after me; all have had their attention diverted by the main formation flying off high above them. So the luck is with me, an isolated aircraft. The whole neighbourhood is full of A.A. guns; the air is peppered with shrapnel. But it is a comfort to know that this weight of iron is not meant exclusively for me! I am now crossing the coast line. The narrow strip is very unpleasant. It would be impossible to gain height because I could not climb fast enough to reach a safe altitude. So I stay down. Past machine guns and flak. Panic-stricken Russians hurl themselves flat on the ground. Then again Scharnovski shouts: "A Rata coming up behind us” I look round and see a Russian fighter about 300 yards astern. “Let him have it, Scharnovski!" Scharnovski does not utter a sound. Ivan is blazing away at a range of only a few inches. I take wild evasive action.
''Are you mad, Scharnovski ? Fire! I'll have you put under arrest." I yell at him! Scharnovski does not fire.
Now he says deliberately: "I am holding fire, sir, because I can see a German Me coming up behind and if I open up on the Rata I may damage the Messerschmitt." That closes the subject, as far as Scharnovski is concerned; but I am sweating with the suspense. The tracers are going wider on either side of me. I weave like mad. “You can turn round now, sir. The Me has shot down the Rata." I bank round slightly and look back. It is as Scharnovski says; there she lies down below. Now a Me passes groggily. "Scharnovski, it will be a pleasure to confirm our fighter's claim to have shot that one down."
He does not reply. He is rather hurt that I was not content to trust his judgment before. I know him; he will sit there and sulk until we land. How many operational flights have we made together when he has not opened his lips the whole time we have been in the air.
After landing, all the crews are paraded in front of the squadron tent. We are told by Flt./Lt. Steen that the Wing Commander has already rung up to congratulate the 3rd squadron on its achievement. He had personally witnessed the very impressive explosion. Steen is instructed to report the name of the officer who was the first to dive and drop the successful two thousand pounder in order that he may be recommended for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. With a side-glance in my direction he says : "Forgive me for telling the Kommodore that I am so proud of the whole squadron that I would prefer it if our success is attributed to the squadron as a whole." In the tent he wrings my hand. “You no longer need a battleship for special mention in despatches” he says with a boyish laugh.
The Wing Commander rings up. “It is sinking day for the 3rd. You are to take off immediately for another attack on the Kirov berthed behind the Marat, Good hunting!" The photographs taken by our latest aircraft show that the Marat has split in two. This can be seen on the picture taken after the tremendous cloud of smoke from the explosion had begun to dissipate. The telephone rings again:
"I say, Steen, did you see my bomb? I didn't and neither did Pekrun." “It fell into the sea, sir, a few minutes before the attack."
We youngsters in the tent are hard put to it to keep a straight face. A short crackling on the receiver and that is all. We are not the ones to blame our Wing Commander, who is old enough to be our father, if presumably out of nervousness he pressed the bomb release switch prematurely. He deserves all praise for flying with us himself on such a difficult mission. There is a big difference between the ages of fifty and twenty five. In dive bomber flying this is particularly true.
Out we go again on a further sortie to attack the Kirov. Steen had a slight accident taxiing back after landing from the first sortie: one wheel ran into a large crater, his aircraft pancaked and damaged the propeller. The 7th flight provides us with a substitute aircraft, the flights are already on dispersal and we taxi off from our squadron base airfield. Flt./Lt. Steen again hits an obstacle and this aircraft is also unserviceable. There is no replacement available from the flights; they are of course already on dispersal. No one else on the staff is flying except myself. He therefore gets out of his aircraft and climbs onto my wingplane. ''I know you are going to be mad at me for taking your aircraft, but as I am in command I must fly with the squadron. I will take Scharnovski with me for this one sortie."
Vexed and disgruntled I walk over to where our aircraft are overhauled and devote myself for a time to my job as engineer officer. The squadron returns at the end of an hour and a half. No. 1, the green-nosed staff aircraft – mine - is missing. I assume the skipper has made a forced landing somewhere within our lines.
As soon as my colleagues have all come in I ask what has happened to the skipper. No one will give me a straight answer until one of them says: “Steen dived onto the Kirov, He was caught by a direct
hit at 5000 or 6000 feet. The flak smashed his rudder and his aircraft was out of control. I saw him try to steer straight at the cruiser by using the ailerons, but he missed her and nose-dived into the sea. The explosion of his two thousand pounder seriously damaged the Kirov''
The loss of our skipper and my faithful Cpl. Scharnovski is a heavy blow to the whole squadron and makes a tragic climax to our otherwise successful day. That fine lad Scharnovski gone! Steen gone! Both in their way were paragons and they can never be fully replaced. They are lucky to have died at a time when they could still hold the conviction that the end of all this misery would bring freedom to Germany and to Europe.
The senior staff captain temporarily takes over command of the squadron. I chose A.C. 1st class Henschel to be my rear-gunner. He has been sent to us by the reserve flight at Graz where he flew with me on several operational exercises. Occasionally I take someone else up with me, first the paymaster, then the intelligence officer and finally the M.O. None of them would care to insure my life. Then after I have taken on Henschel permanently and he has been transferred to the staff he is always furious if I leave him behind and some one else flies with me in his stead. He is as jealous as a little girl.
We are out again a number of times over the Gulf of Finland before the end of September, and we succeed in sending another cruiser to the bottom. We are not so lucky with the second battleship Oktobrescaja Revolutia. She is damaged by bombs of smaller calibre but not very seriously. When we manage on one sortie to score a hit with a two thousand pounder, on that particular day not one of these heavy bombs explodes. Despite the most searching investigation it is not possible to determine where the sabotage was done. So the Soviets keep one of their battleships.
There is a lull in the Leningrad sector and we are needed at a new key point. The relief of the infantry has been successfully accomplished, the Russian salient along the coastal strip has been pushed back with the result that Leningrad has now been narrowly invested. But Leningrad does not fall, for the defenders hold Lake Ladoga and thereby secure the supply line for the fortress.
5 - Before Moscow
WE carry out a few more missions on the Wolchow and Leningrad front. During the last of these sorties it is so much quieter everywhere here in the air that we conclude the balloon must be about to go up in some other part of the line. We are sent back to the central sector of the Eastern front, and as soon as we get there we begin to notice that the infantry is spoiling for action. There are rumours here of an offensive in the direction of Kalinin - Jaroslav. Over the air bases Moschna - Kuleschewka we by-pass Rshew and land at Staritza. Flight Lieutenant Pressler has replaced our late skipper as squadron commander. He comes from a neighbouring wing.
Gradually the cold weather sets in and we get a foretaste of approaching winter. The fall in the temperature gives me, as engineer officer of the squadron, all kinds of technical problems, for suddenly we begin to have trouble with our aircraft which is only caused by the cold. It takes a long time before experience teaches me the answer to the problems. The senior fitters, especially, now have their worries when everyone is doing his utmost to have the maximum possible number of aircraft serviceable. Mine has an accident as well. He is unloading bombs from a lorry when one of them tips over and smashes his big toe with its fins. I am standing close by when it happens. For a long time he is speechless; then he comments, gazing ruefully at his toe: ''My long-jumping days are over!" The weather has not yet become really cold. The sky is overcast, but there are warmer currents again with low clouds. They are of no help to us in our operations.
Kalinin has been occupied by our troops, but the Soviets are fighting back very bitterly and still hold their positions nearer the town. It will be difficult for our divisions to develop their advance, especially as the weather is of great assistance to the Russians. Besides, the incessant fighting has seriously reduced the strength of our units. Also our supply lines are not functioning any too smoothly, because the main communications road from Staritza to Kalinin runs right in front of the town in the hands of the enemy who exerts a continuous pressure from the East on our front line. I can soon see for myself how difficult and confused the situation is. Our effective strength in aircraft is at the moment small. The reasons are casualties, the effects of the weather, etc. I fly as No. 1 - in the absence of the C.O. - in a sortie to Torshok, a railway junction N.W. of Kalinin. Our objectives are the railway station and the lines of communication with the rear. The weather is bad, cloud level only about 1800 feet. This is very low for a target with extremely strong defence. Should the weather deteriorate sufficiently to endanger our return flight we have been ordered to make a landing on the airfield S. of the town of Kalinin.
We have a long wait for our fighter escort at our rendezvous. They fail to show up; presumably the weather is too bad for them. By waiting about in the air we have wasted a lot of petrol. We circuit round Torshok at a moderate altitude trying to discover the most weakly defended spot. At first it seems that the defence is pretty uniformly heavy, and then having found a more favourable spot we attack the railway station. I am glad when all our aircraft are in formation again behind me. The weather goes from bad to worse, plus a heavy fall of snow. Perhaps we have just enough petrol left to reach Staritza provided we are not forced to make too wide a detour because of the weather. I quickly decide and set course for the nearer Kalinin; besides, the sky looks brighter in the East. We land at Kalinin. Everybody is running round in circles in steel helmets. Aircraft from another fighter-bomber wing are here already. Just as I am switching off my ignition I hear and see tank shells fall on the airfield. Some of the aircraft are already riddled with holes. I hurry away in search of the operations room of the formation which has moved in here to obtain a more accurate picture of the situation. From what I learn we shall have no time to waste in overhauling our aircraft. The Soviets are attacking the airfield with tanks and infantry, and are less than a mile away. A thin screen of our own infantry protects our perimeter; the steel monsters may be upon us at any moment.
We Stukas are a godsend to the ground troops defending the position. Together with the Henschel 123s of the fighter-bomber wing we keep up a steady attack on the tanks until late in the evening. We land again a few minutes after taking off. The ground personnel are able to follow every phase of the battle. We are well on the mark, for everybody realises that unless the tanks are put out of action we have had it. We spend the night in a barracks on the Southern outskirts of the town. We are startled out of sleep by a grinding noise. Is it one of our flak tractors changing position or is it Ivan with his tanks? Anything can happen here in Kalinin. Our infantry comrades tell us that yesterday some tanks drove into the market square, firing at everything that showed itself. They had broken through our outposts and it took a long time to deal with them in the town. Here there is an incessant thunder of gunfire; our artillery is in our rear shelling Ivan above our heads.
The nights are pitch dark with a low blanket of cloud. There is no air fighting except close to the ground. As once again the supply road has been cut the battle-weary ground troops are faced with many shortages. Yet they never falter in their superhuman task. A sudden cold snap of over forty degrees freezes the normal lubricating oil. Every machine gun jams. They say the cold makes no difference to the Russians; that they have special animal fats and preparations. We are short of equipment of every kind, the lack of which seriously impairs our effective strength in this excessive cold. A very slow trickle of supplies is coming through. The natives cannot remember such bitter weather in the last twenty or thirty years. The battle with the cold is tougher than the battle with the enemy. The Soviets could not have a more valuable ally. Our tank troops complain that their turrets refuse to swivel, that everything is frozen stiff. We remain at Kalinin for some days and are in the air incessantly. We soon get to know every ditch. The front line has been pushed forward again a few miles to the East of our airfield, and we return to our base at Staritza where we have
long been expected back. From here we continue operations, also in the direction of Ostaschkow, and then we are ordered to move to Gorstowo near Rusa, about fifty miles from Moscow.
Our divisions which have been thrown in here are pushing forward along the motor road through Moshaisk towards Moscow. A narrow spearhead of our tanks advancing through Swenigorod - Istra is within six miles of the Russian capital. Another group has also thrust even further Eastwards and has established two bridgeheads to the North of the city on the East bank of the Moscow - Arctic canal; one of them at Dimitrov.
It is now December and the thermometer registers 40-50 degrees below zero (centigrade). Huge snowdrifts, cloud cover generally low, flak intense. Plt./Off. Klaus, an exceptionally fine airman and one of the few left of our old companions, is killed, probably a chance hit from a Russian tank. Here, as at Kalinin, the weather is our chief enemy and the saviour of Moscow. The Russian soldier is fighting back desperately, but he, too, is winded and exhausted and without this ally would be unable to stem our further advance. Even the fresh Siberian units which have been thrown into the battle are not decisive. The German armies are crippled by the cold. Trains have practically stopped running; there are no reserves and no supplies, no transportation for the wounded. Iron determination alone is not enough. We have reached the limit of our strength. The most needful things are lacking. Machinery is immobilised, transport bottle-necked; no petrol, no ammunition. Lorries have long since been off the roads. Horse-drawn sleighs are the only means of locomotion. Tragic scenes of retreat recur with ever greater frequency. We have few aircraft. In temperatures like these engines are short-lived. As previously when we had the initiative we go out in support of our ground troops, now fighting to hold the attacking Soviets.
Stuka Pilot Page 5