German Accounts of Battle of Britain Missions
 

Been 'dicked' to give a bit of 'entertainment' for a BoB dinner; thought I might give an account of what the Jerries went through, as it would be a bit different. Tried various searches, but to no avail. Anyone got any ideas/links to any good sites that I could legally plunder?

Globemeister - I apologise for butting in, but I've recently been looking for books on the same subject.

So if anyone knows of any decent books by German airmen (pilots/navs, gunners etc) on their experiences during the BoB I'd be very grateful.

Don't know of any links for it just now but the TV Series/book "Spitfire Ace" by channel 4 had a good few interviews with german vets in, might be worth seeing if there's a copy floating around the net?

Try Googling.. Adolf Galland... That should give you some info.

"The First and the Last" by Adolf Galland should be available through your local library.
"The Luftwaffe Fighters' Battle of Britain: The Inside Story - July-October 1940" by Chris Goss.
"Spitfire on My Tail: A View from the Other Side" by Ulrich Steinhilper.

Can't help the OP I'm afraid, but I have dug up various short accounts from the RAF point of view (including a couple from mechanincs and one from a rock) from about t'interweb for reading at BofB dinners/events should anyone need such a thing.

Gotta have it done by tomorrow. Can anyone email any of the text?

You could try asking this lot ....

Luftwaffe Experten Message Board -> Welcome to the LEMB & The Rules

Try this link :

Axis History Forum • View topic - The Luftwaffe in the Battle for Britain

Some interesting opinions including somebody claiming the BoB was a 'draw'. That should give you something to go on.

Not dissimilar to stating that apart from the drive to the airport, Mr and Mrs Kennedy enjoyed the trip to Dallas....

Good luck,

Eagle402

Globemeister - check your PMs

Battle of Britain
 

There's always the point that Douglas Bader was ---- rather than hero; I used to work with a chap who was groundcrew at Tangmere ( shown in the film B of B quite correctly as the place getting bombed to bits, then the squadrons moving to the 'flying school' - Westhampnet, now known as Goodwood - my grandfather was a ground to air gunner there, but the only thing he got in his sights was crumpet !

Anyway I was told that on the day of Bader's fail to return, a party was held ! There was no doubting his fighting tenacity, just he wasn't so good as a human being.

It has recently been 'proved' - as much as anything can be - by Luftwaffe records & other sources that he was shot down, not collided with as he later insisted.

In 1994 I was engineer/deckhand ( long story ) on a 128' barge in Burgundy. One week I was doing an overhaul, so able to invite my then wife down.

We noticed a chap on his own in the restaurant, from a small British boat.

On asking him to join us, it turned out he'd been a Spitfire pilot, shot down quite early in the Battle of Britain.

He'd been a POW in the same initial camp as Bader, and mentioned " Oh yes, we all had a good word for Bader, but I can't repeat it in front of your wife ! "

Bader. Yes. Perhaps he wasn't the pleasantest of men, but thank God we had the likes of him and Gibson when we needed them. Tony Blair, on the other hand, is absolutely charming. I'll say no more.

If anybody wants to read the non-airbrushed version of the first few years of WWII up to and including the BofB, I'd recommend "1940 - myth and reality" by Clive Ponting. It looks at the broader strategy and organisation that lead up to the BofB, rather than analysing the battle itself, but it is nevertheless a very good read. He does indeed, as another poster alluded above, conclude that the BofB was more of a draw than a turning point in the war as it has since been portrayed.

Yep, Clive Ponting is the same bloke who blew the whistle on the sinking of the Belgrano, who after being sacked by the MoD went on to become a history professor at a decent university. But don't let that put you off unless you are a committed hollywood-history redneck..

Globemeister, we were flying a holiday charter from Tegel to Palma (I think) so full up with German holiday makers. One by one they came up front to take the obligatory snaps of the Flight Deck and thence give way to the next visitor. I noticed though that one chap had hung back, probably about the age I am now, and was looking at the flight instruments. "Excuse me, but is that your Gyro and that one your Kompass (ie German accent)?", he asked. "Yes, are you a pilot?", I replied. "Not now, but many years ago I flew the Emil" "Oh really? (covering up total ignorance of that aircraft)". "Yes, I shoot down 3 Tommies!". Click!. Suddenly the Emil was revealed as the Me109E. "But soon it was my turn and I was shot down" "Oh bad luck (this a little disingenuously), what happened?" "It was a beautiful day, and as I came down by parachute over the Kannel I can see France and England also. From France I see a motor boat coming towards me, but then from England I see one also coming" "Who got to you first?" " Oh that was such a bad day for me!" "Because the English captured you?" "No because the Germans rescued me! I had to go back to the war, and soon we had to go to Russia and spend the rest of the war on the Eastern Front!" I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten his name now, but he must have been both lucky and skilled to have survived the Eastern Front to the end. He also told us that every year in Tegel there was a Luftwaffe reunion to which all pilots of all nations were invited. He was the most charming and modest of men, especially given that he was an ex-fighter pilot (time to get undercover now) and the very antithesis of the Nazi stereotype. If this tale is of any use to you, Globemeister, feel free as they say.

Globemeister

Bader and the batman made to stay at Colditz is a known story. Bader died 1982.
Kenneth More did him a good snow job when he made the movie.(1956)
Disgraceful behaviour from an officer.

Perhaps at the last hour, the Prussian cavalry might once again save the British skin?
HyperWar: The Battle of Britain--A German Perspective

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ww2/batlbrit.pdf

At any rate, old bean, hope this is useful and tomorrow a victory.

Further to the recommendations above I have pm'd Globemeister but unless he can get his hands on a copy my suggestion will be too late. However, I can recommend :

'I flew for the Fuhrer' by Heinz Knoke. Memoirs of a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. 400 missions, 52 Allied kills including 19 USAAF bombers. Shot down and badly injured himself near the end of the war. Awarded the Knight's Cross.

In stock at that well known river related site. Superb read. There are also some good references to life in a Luftwaffe night-fighter squadron in Len Deighton's excellent 'Bomber'. Fiction but, as ever, the research is superb. One story that comes to mind is two of the pilots playing cards in the afternoon prior to that evening's mission. One loses heavily and is reminded that he now owes a serious amount of marks especially with inflation being at lunatic levels. He replies drily "my money's in my other trousers".

Chugalug2 - great story - thanks for that amigo. My dad, on business in East Berlin in the early 70's, met an ex Me-110 pilot who had flown relief missions during the siege of Stalingrad. I still have his autograph on a 'Dogfight Double' box (featuring a Typhoon and a FW-190 iirc) that my dad had bought on the outbound trip. I remember my dad conveying the utter despair that the guy had experienced as virtually all of the supplies/ammo fell into Russian hands.

Regards and good luck tomorrow,

Eagle402

Years ago, when I was a sprogg Harrier pilot, we deployed during a NATO exercise to Diepholz on the North German Plain. Deipholz was a Luftwaffe recruit training base with a 4000 ft runway and it was commanded by Oberst Otto Kraft. Colonel Kraft used to enjoy coming into the bar of an evening and having a drink with us. It quickly transpired that, during the war, he had flown Me110 nightfighters and the Me262.

One of the "mates" said to him:

" Colonel, I believe the Me262 was a bit of a handful in the circuit, is that true?"

Colonel Kraft:

"Ze only time ze 262 vos a problem in ze circuit vos venn zere vos a Typhoon downvint".

The boss took him for a trip in the T4 and they poked off to the Moehne See. Running down the lake with the HUD bombfall line through the dam, the colonel was heard to mutter:

" Zat iss not zo clever, Herr Ving Commander. It hass been done before, you know".

Don't give them any time;they started it, we won.

They tried really hard (Jubilee, Torch, Overlord) to get rid of my Dad.

Ponting, and others, maintain that the Battle of Britain was a draw. He and they are wrong.
In simple mathematical terms of aircraft destroyed on each side during the battle, one could perhaps argue it was a draw. However, it was not a tennis match.
The vital objective of the Luftwaffe was to obtain air supremacy over southern England which was essential in order that the ground troops could cross the Channel and successfully gain a bridgehead on the South Coast to begin the invasion of Britain. The RAF prevented them from achieving that objective. Without the desired supremacy, or even superiority, in the air the Wehrmacht was forced to call off the invasion.
That was certainly a victory for the defenders and also a significant turning point in the war which, up to then, had been a walk-over for the Axis.

While I cannot agree that the BOB was a draw I do not
believe that it was a great victory against great odds
that it was claimed to be.When one looks at the capabilities
of the aircraft the Luftwaffe were using,the tactics they
employed,and their incompetent intelligence services, one
can only come to the conclusion that they were pre-programmed
to lose.
Regards

I remember when I was young, so quite a while ago, reading a book based on a wargame that some experts ran not long after the war. They got people in to play the main characters, e.g. Adolf Galland played Goering, etc, and they followed what were known at the time to be the invasion plan and the counters to it! And of course they knew what the weather had been like.

Basically if the Germans had invaded without winning air superiority. The battle would have been a mess on the ground, but the Germans would not have been defeated until the entire Home Seas fleet had sailed into the Channel, destroyed the invasion fleet and most of Calais. The entire fleet was lost but they had done their job!

With complete air superiority, the Luftwaffe would have bombed the fleet as it sailed south, so it wouldn't have got anywhere near the Channel. Without air superiority, the RAF could protect the fleet until it was in the Channel.

The turning point was caused because not losing the BoB, allowed Roosevelt to win his arguement to support us, and not Joe Kennedy's, to abandon us!!

The definition of a victory is to achieve your own aim while preventing your opponent from achieving his. No way was the BoB a draw. Strategically and politically it was an overwhelming victory for us.

An interesting perspective :

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...icle617574.ece

It's interesting and also complete b****cks. Sadly for the journalist who put the original piece together for Hysteria Today, the way in which he misquoted the three academics ensured that the only quote he's going to get out of any of their colleagues in future if writing a military-related story will be short, end in 'off' and be followed by the sound of the dialling tone.

The actual views of the three quoted were aired in the RUSI Journal a few months later, but since they were rather more balanced than the quotes that the Times ran, didn't get any publicity... see here for more

There is a chap who has written a PhD arguing that the Navy won the Battle of Britian, though (ex-RN, IIRC....)

The Diving Eagle

Just read the aforementioned book myself and is from Peter Stahl German Ju-88 pilot. The first half covers his training, Low Countries invasion, Battle of Britain, The Blitz and operations against shipping in Scotland and North Sea.

Interesting Read.


Regards

RNAS Yeovilton used to hold B of B days. On the basis that about seven RNAS pilots were attached to the RAF during that period the Navy won it flying Spitfires.

Bader
 

I first met Bader when, as a 13 year old air scout I scored the job of marshalling his Miles Gemini at an airshow at Newtownards, N.Ireland.
I considered this to be a great honour until Bader climbed out after shutting down and I asked him for his autograph. He replied "You young whippersnapper, I was killing Germans when you were only a twinkle in your fathers eye. Get my case out of the aircraft and take it to the club house".
I was mortified.
Later on as a junior officer flying Victor tankers I heard a story in the bar at RAF Leuchars that he had recently visited 43 Sqn. (I think). When he was being shown a Phantom by the 'Boss' he was heard to ask " Nice piece of kit so why don't give the Ruskies a bloody good squirt"?
This was exactly what a very professional and disiplined RAF were being very careful to avoid. None of us needed WW III.
He was a rude and stupid grumpy old man.

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

BTW, I'm in the camp that says an invasion would not have succeeded. Most of the transport shipping consisted of canal barges with odd bits of weaponry welded to them. They were totally unsuitable for the open sea and many would have capsized, been swamped, broken down etc without any help from the British.

Also, air cover notwithstanding, enough RN ships would have got through to wreak havoc against the aramada.

Dowding would not have kept the other fighter Groups out of the fray either.
If the boats had started moving everything would have been flung against them.

All IMHO.

I agree, they wouldn't have made it; the Germans never had a decent Navy ( apart from early surprise attacks on trading ships by 'pocket battleships' such as Graf Spee ) and would have been slaughtered by aircraft & home fleet.

I happened to work on a similar barge ( in Burgundy, 1994 ) and any stretch of open water was scary ! - I'm a sailor & yachtmaster offshore ( also been involved with Harriers & Hawks a bit ) with 24 crossings under my belt, and I know a barge crew who did cross the Channel; they kept the 45 degree scrape marks from the clock on the bulkhead as a momento of the the day they thought death was within 5 minutes !

As for Bader, we could do perfectly well without his type...I presume you've seen the recent programme which concluded he was shot down, and indeed played up to the Luftwaffe officers, asking if a proficient ace had got him, then later claimed he was in a collision.

Anyway if the Germans had landed on our shores, Captain Mannering, and his valiant men, would have driven them back into the sea.

The Luftwaffe's objective was to gain air superiority over the channel and southern England. They didn't get anywhere near it, so that makes it an RAF win by any method of reckoning.

On Douglas Bader, a couple of quotes (approximated)...

Bob Stanford Tuck "I really can't stand that dreadful man!"
Sailor Malan "If he wasn't the way he is, he wouldn't be here"

Even with air superiority I don't see how a German invasion force could have crossed the Channel in the face of determined Royal Navy opposition - and they were certainly determined. The Luftwaffe were not well equipped with torpedo bombers and their efforts against heavy RN units screening convoys in northern waters proved ineffective.

By late 1941, the Japanese on the other hand, had mastered the art. :suspect:

"Anyway if the Germans had landed on our shores, Captain Mannering, and his valiant men, would have driven them back into the sea"

Too true, goudie, they would have marmalised them. :ok:

Len Deighton has written a book of short stories about WW, they are very readable, in one you really don't know which side he is talking about until the very end, the pilot is telling his ground crew he 'got one', they ask, 'Did he burn or did he jump?', (before the date of parachutes), until the very end you assume it is a British flight and then they talk of the muttering sounds and smell of hot oil of the BMW/Mercedes engine cooling down, and a few other pointers, really brings home the fact that both sides suffered causalities. Just wish I could remember the name of the book, it was so good it didn't get returned!

Got it!!! Declarations of War by Len Deighton, I seriously recommend this book, (ISBN: 9780099856504) available from people like www.abebooks.com etc. for a few dollars now.

Try reading "Fighter" by Len Deighton. His "factual" version of events.
I know a lot is personal opinion, but it is well researched and poses some interesting ideas.
It is along time since I read it, but he made two interesting points I still remember:
Firstly, the Germans made very poor use of the Me 110. Used as a close escort it could not make use of its powerful armament and good endurance. It had a top speed just below that of the Hurricane but was slow to accelerate when bounced. Its main benefit to the bombers was that it diverted some of the ammunition away from them.
The 110 crews wanted to use them in two ways. The first was as high level independent formations ahead of the main stream. This way they would trade hight for speed, and use their superior fire power to obtain first pass kills against more nimble single engined Brit fighters. A bit like the Americans achieved with the P38 a couple of years later.
Its second use would have been low level attack agaist the fighter bases.

Secondly, When Albert Speer was asked why the RAF had won the Battle of Britain. His answer was, in order:
1. Beaverbrook
2. Dowding and Park
3. The RAF fighter pilots
Beaverbrooks concentration on new build, rather than repair, meant that throughout the Battle loses of Spits and Hurries were replaced daily one for one. Around 7 Sep loses became critical, but the Germans changed tactics and lost the advantage. Lots more information on this in the book.
At the start of the battle the Germans fighter pilots had far more experience and superior tactics (which we quickly copied). The 11 Gp small number ambush kept our loses down while experience was gained.
If Leigh Mallory and Bader had been listened to and we had, in the early stages, thrown "big wings" over eastern Kent, where the 109 endurance was treble, our loses would have been unsustainable.
Final point. He thought our pilots were skilled, brave and learned quickly

Documentary on TV a month or so ago about a team that went hunting for the wreck of Bader's Spitfire to prove how he finally came to earth. Having read both British and German after action reports for that day, they came to the conclusion that Bader was the victim of a "Blue on Blue" and he claimed to have had the collision to avoid the embarrasment of being where he was not supposed to be!

One wonders how deliberate it was.......

Try 'Duel of Eagles' by Peter Townsend. A fantastic book starting with the buildup to war in the thirties and during the battle, looking from both sides.

...- ...- ...-

"Ach, Himmel! Ve to sheiß shot being vere!"

Actually, back in 1968-9 when Battle of Britain was being made, the ex-BoB Luftwaffe pilots said that the portrayal of their fighter pilots in northern France was 100% accurate. So, watch the movie again carefully and you'll get a good idea.

Regrettably, when gentlemen like Bob Stanford-Tuck were prepared to discuss the past with honesty, Bader was still insulting the Germans with his unpleasantness some 28 years after the Battle. But the pugnacious manner he showed during the Battle was appropriate and necessary at the time - he just never seemed to realise that the war was over.

A colleague of mine some years ago had a father who'd been 'in the bag' with Bader. One day on parade, Bader thought it would be ever-so-funny to lob a snowball at the elderly, correct Commandant who presided over the camp. So the latter merely kept them all on parade for another 2 hours. Bader's little jape was hardly appreciated amongst his fellow prisoners, as one might imagine.....

The crucial point is that Churchill - opposed by some who were ready to make terms with Germany - led the nation in fighting on, and resisting the invasion that everyone expected was inevitable, because since 1939 the Germans had seemed invincible.

The RAF handed the Germans a tactical defeat - since the Germans did not accomplish any of their objectives (whether to invade, to achieve air superiority over south-east England, or to destroy the RAF as a fighting force) and the RAF achieved its objective, which was to retain control of the air over England. I'm not sure how you call that a draw.

Whether the invasion would have been possible even with German air dominance over the Channel is an unanswerable what-if. Peter Fleming, in the 1960s book Operation Sea Lion (based on wargames if I remember rightly), concluded that the OKW was planning what was essentially a river crossing under fire and could not have successfully held ground in the UK.

What's more important was that the Battle of Britain proved that the Germans could be beaten. This in turn proved Churchill right, and the Halifaxes and Kennedys wrong.

Was not Adolf Galland one of the technical advicers for the Battle of Britain movie?
So the Luftwaffe scenes should be correct.

grab a copy of 'the battle of britain' on dvd, press play, sit back down, then get pissed:E