Hitler's Jet Plane (22 page)

The men and women of the communications networks and the ground-crew Spartans achieved the nigh-impossible, at work day and night in the hangars, hardly able to keep their eyes open for lack of sleep, their only opportunity for rest was when collapsed in a bunker or slit trench at the approach of enemy aircraft. And whenever a pilot, whose machine or weapons they had overhauled the previous day, failed to return, in a sense they shared in the loss. And right up to the last day, no pilot had to be asked twice to fly a mission.

The story of the Me 262 in March and April 1945 is written in the sky in blood. One dramatic air-battle followed another. Bombers exploded while the jet’s armoured windscreen splintered. A
Rotte
[flying formation consisting of a pair], or four, or six Me 262s would venture into the field of defensive fire of a swarm of ten to fifteen four-engined bombers whose tail-gunners would keep firing as long as the finger could be crooked around a trigger.

Almost daily III/JG7 received a warning of bombers approaching. One day, four jets rose to intercept, one
Rotte
led by Georg Eder, the other by Quax Schnörrer. Eder was an old warhorse: seventy-eight victories in the West by the war’s end, twelve in jets, in all thirty-six heavy bombers. He had won the Oak Leaves and had deserved them, but his refusal to know when he was beaten was what really made him stand out. His list of ‘special engagements’ was considerable and his operational reports read like an adventure story. If asked how many times he had been shot down, he had to think back before he could answer. He was as
au fait
with his parachute as his umbrella and, since he had survived this far, was endowed with more than his fair share of good luck.

As the pilot of a defective Me 109 once, he crashed into a wooden communications chalet on the edge of the airfield. The occupants were out at the time. The collision demolished the structure, the W/T equipment and the Me 109 was a total write-off. Eder had a few bruises to show for his experience. Apparently he did a cartwheel of joy when he was offered the opportunity to fly the Me 262. He never forgot his first take-off in a jet, nor the day which preceded it. He was drafted to Achmer, where he was looking forward to meeting up again with an old school friend, Alfred Täumer, who was already a pilot in the Kommando Nowotny. Upon his arrival, Eder was informed that Täumer had crashed fatally the day before. On the day of his first flight, he was waiting to take off behind Oberleutnant Bley’s machine. He watched as Bley roared down the runway, had some kind of problem getting off the ground and crashed into an adjoining field. There was a burst of flame and that was the end of Bley.

Stabsingenieur Leitner, supervising Eder’s first take-off, told him to get out of the machine. Leitner explained that he considered it very unfavourable to attempt a maiden take-off after having witnessed Bley’s demise. Leitner thought it best for Eder to have an successful example to follow. Eder got back in his machine and prepared to follow Leitner’s take-off.

At first all went well. Once in the air Eder noticed his left turbine billowing smoke and he realised that the machine was describing a long, curving turn which would bring him over the main hangar. He had little enough height, just enough to scrape the hangar roof. The contact knocked off a wing and the remainder of the airframe went through the roof into the hangar below. Eder took off again in another aircraft, admitting his fear that if he did not do so at once, he would never fly again. The second flight passed off without incident.

He reported that his first victory as a jet pilot was made ‘by mistake’. He took off from Lechfeld, was directed by W/T to an enemy machine and enveloped himself in the condensation stream of the enemy aircraft. He released the safety catch of his weapons, glanced at his instrument panel and decided to attack. At that instant, before having fired, the Lightning was suddenly huge and near in front of him and there occurred forthwith the sickening crack of a collision. He had tangled with some part of the enemy fighter as he tried to rise above his opponent. Eder paused during his baling-out procedure when he noticed that his aircraft seemed in no difficulty. Both turbines were running, there were a few large bumps in the wing, but these seemed harmless, and in the end he landed safely at Lechfeld. The adventure joined the thick sheaf of reports in his personal file.

Quax Schnörrer and wingman Oberfähnrich Petermann were in a loose formation behind Eder’s
Rotte
when they sighted the large bomber formation. Schnörrer reported:

We saw two waves of bombers, the larger with about twenty-seven machines and a smaller one with nine. Eder told me by W/T we would attack the smaller formation as there were only four of us. Then he said, ‘Come on, Quax, we’ll all attack together!’ I followed his
Rotte
. The enemy formation was putting up a massive defensive fire yet I saw Eder get so close to the bombers’ tails that I thought his intention must be to ram. A few seconds later two or three of the bombers were spinning through the depths to destruction. Eder got the first, Petermann, my wingman, and I the other one or two. We banked to disengage, then Eder called: ‘We’ll attack again!’ We banked sharply to re-establish contact with the bombers and while doing this I noticed that both our wingmen had vanished. I closed up with Eder, covering his rear as another four-engined bomber began to disintegrate under his fire. After that we landed undamaged at our home airfield, where we also discovered our two wingmen had returned without mishap.

Nobody would have taken it amiss of Karl Schnörrer if he had had a breather after this intensive and successful burst of action. He had flown over 500 combat missions, had been shot down five times, landing by parachute each time and had old wounds to both knees. When he went swimming after the war he would demonstrate how his knees worked sideways as well as backwards when flexed. He had suffered his worst injury on 12 November 1943 when shot down from an altitude of 200 feet and hit the ground below a half-open ’chute; the result was a fractured skull, broken ribs, both knee joints broken and a broken arm. Not fully recovered, he resumed active flying until his final combat encounter on 30 March 1945.

On that last day his trio had been invited to a party at the Küps estate near Parchim. The splendid house was situated in magnificent parkland and many beautiful young ladies of the district would be attending. The morning had been quiet, no enemy aircraft alarms, the afternoon appeared likely to be the same, and what had happened in the air that night did not concern them. Karl Schnörrer and his friends shaved, showered, put a parting in their hair, took their best walking-out uniforms and highly polished shoes from their wardrobes and were in the act of admiring their reflections in the mirror when the alarm came: bombers over the Zuider Zee, target probably Hamburg.

Back into the wardrobes went the uniform jackets, to be replaced by flying blouses; the freshly pressed trousers and the polished shoes could remain – and they sprinted to the hangar. The Me 262s were towed to the runway, the men climbed up into cabin and strapped up – off! There were only three of them, but they made a good swarm – Schnörrer, Oberfeldwebel Helmut Lennartz, one of the best jet pilots, and the veteran ensign, Oberfähnrich Viktor Petermann. A few minutes later they were all in the air, and after a few curses at their misfortune, the young ladies of Küps were forgotten.

The destination was Hamburg, weather was good, and the three jets rose swiftly and smoothly. No enemy aircraft were yet in sight when, over Ludwigslust, Lennartz suddenly reported by W/T: ‘Look me over, Quax, my turbine is smouldering.’ Schnörrer bore away and drew back to let Lennartz fly past him and saw a thick ribbon of smoke pouring from the machine. ‘Go back, Helmut,’ he shouted, ‘and make sure you get there safely.’ He watched as the Oberfeldwebel’s aircraft sheered out of the swarm and disappeared at the end of a wide turn.

Now he was alone with Petermann. Me 262 pilots were used to being in a laughable numerical inferiority on every combat mission: it was very rare for an airfield to be able to have more than half-a-dozen jets ready to send up at any one time. In any case, Petermann was an old and reliable flyer at age twenty-nine. He was credited with sixty-four victories, plus one gunboat and fifty troop ferries in Russia on low-flying missions and had been awarded the Knight’s Cross in 1944. Flak had robbed him of his left arm, and he flew with a prosthesis; he had been offered the opportunity to sit out the war in a sheltered ground job but preferred the cockpit of an Me 262 fighter.

Over Hamburg it was thicker than they had expected. Near Ludwigslust they reached their operational altitude and soon saw over the city a great swarm of four-engined B-17 bombers such as neither had ever seen before. Wave upon wave crossed the horizon, an endless procession. ‘Another nice mess we’ve got ourselves into,’ Quax muttered, but there was no alternative: they had to attack.

Almost wingtip-to-wingtip the two machines banked to get behind the first bomber formation where they ducked and weaved through long streams of tracer bullets and a hail of defensive fire. Petermann fired his rockets first and dismembered a heavy bomber. Parts of it spun away lazily and then the burning enemy aircraft tumbled into the depths. Schnörrer fired fractions of a second later into a bomber, but as he climbed above the wave he saw only traces of smoke and so could not claim the kill. He searched around and could not see Petermann. Schnörrer called to him over the W/T: ‘Go home, Petermann, I’m attacking again!’

‘Victor, Victor,’ came the confirmation as Schnörrer made a wide turn in order to re-engage the American force. As he straightened up, he saw the enemy machine he had disabled enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke. He watched it begin its death dive, then roared into the murderous fire of the enemy tail-gunners. The whole formation was now concentrating on the single jet fighter attacking them. Schnörrer remained as nonchalant as if the rain of lead were hailstones, although he could feel the enemy fire ripping through the airframe. A turbine stopped, forcing him to break off and as he turned away he saw the gaping holes and bumps in the surfaces of the Me 262 wings. He looked down, picked out the familiar layout of Lüneburg and decided to attempt a forced landing. He still had 18,000 feet below him, so plenty of time still. His speed had fallen away, and he was now easy pickings if the American fighter escorts found him. For a while he thought he had got away with it, but then they were suddenly there. High to his rear he spotted the first points coming closer, two, three, four P-51s; they overshot him because he was flying so slowly and Schnörrer fired off a long burst without finding a mark. He realised at once that there was no use in continuing with the one turbine. He gained a little height, threw off the cabin hood, released the clasp of his straps and was sucked out of the cockpit before he could turn the machine on its back. A fraction of a second later he heard an sickening crash which drilled through his marrow and bones. After that it went quiet.

He let himself fall. Pulling the ripcord at this height would allow the Mustangs easy target-practice. He tumbled through the depths, felt how how his initial fast rate of fall slowed as he encountered wind resistance until finally he was dropping at a consistent 250 kph.

It was not the first time he had fallen in such a manner. It was almost like gliding, unimpeded pure flight which allowed one every freedom of movement. Before the war he had been a parachutist of wide renown who gave exhibitions from high towers; he knew now that as long as he remained a small bundle in the air, he was in no danger of being machine-gunned by an enemy fighter. They wouldn’t be able to see him.

Falling inverted, slightly on his back with head down, he suddenly noticed how his right leg waggled uncontrollably between upper thigh and foot as if the joints and bones had gone. Now he understood the loud noise he had heard when leaving the aircraft: he had struck his leg against the jet’s tailplane and injured himself seriously. He felt no pain, but was concerned, trying to hold the leg in both hands to stop the pendulum movement. In this manner he kept falling and finally tugged the ripcord of his parachute only when over a wood, as close as possible to the ground.

He fell between the trees without the canopy snagging fully, heard the silk rip above him, felt a short jerk and collapsed on the brown earth. He was unable to stand. With his pocket-knife he cut open the blood-soaked trouser leg and, severing the cable from his headphones, used it as a tourniquet to staunch the flow of blood. As a sensation of drowsiness swept over him, he took a Pervitin stimulant tablet, but it didn’t seem to help. He bound the leg above the knee and, as the flow of blood stopped, attempted to treat the wound. His knife severed ribbons of flesh and peeled away dirty pieces of skin from the wound, then he cleaned it as well as he could from his first-aid pack before applying a sterile dressing. Once the job was finished tiredness overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness.

The sound of a discussion brought him to. An elderly nursing sister and some men were tending him. He learned that he had landed close to Nettelkamp near Uelzen. The men removed the remains of the parachute from the trees, folded the silk panels together and laid Schnörrer on the improvised hammock before carrying him to the nursing sister’s house at Nettelkamp to await the ambulance from Uelzen. In the hospital there the doctors managed to save the leg, but as footballers say, he was left with one good leg and a swinger.