How did the Bf 110 change over the years you flew with it?
In the beginning, when we were flying over Britain, the plane’s cockpit was very empty. There was not a lot of equipment between me and the pilot. If your pilot got shot, you could crawl over the console and maybe sit on the lap of that guy and [fly] the plane. I could never do that because I was too big – but it happened.
A Zerstorergeschwader 26 “Horst Wessel” Bf 110 is fueled somewhere in France, October 1940. Bundesarchive photo
But a year later, no one could do that anymore because that space got all built up with equipment: radio equipment and some navigation equipment that enabled you to get your position.
What was the strategy in flying against bombers?
We didn’t fly against bombers in the beginning; we were protecting bombers – our bombers. From Calais was about a 20-minute flight to England. We would also be meeting bombers that came from Norway. We could escort our bombers about as far as Manchester before we had to turn back.
They even sent Junkers 52 [cargo/transport planes] over London, with bombs just rolled in there. They would just kick them out of the plane. I understand they even sent planes that just had barrels of gasoline and a phosphorus bomb attached to them. It was a very primitive way to do it.
Get the hell out of there. Get away.
We weren’t fighting any bombers at that time, we were just protecting ours as well as we could. But sometimes [when enemy fighters got into us], all we could do was take the hell off. There were many times I can remember where we went almost all the way to the ground. We’d be maybe 200 feet off the ground, maneuvering all over the place just trying to get back to France again. The Spitfires were all over us.
I remember one time we were running so low that I saw two people on bicycles on the road below us. It was a young man and a young woman. Since we were so low, they didn’t hear us until we were right on top of them. They just fell right over when we passed by. Boop! And they were on the ground.
When you encountered Spitfires, what was your best tactic?
In the 110? Get the hell out of there. Get away.
What were some of the pilots you flew with like?
The Messerschmitt Bf 110 looked ready for a fight, but its strategy when encountering a Spitfire was to bug out. San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives photo
I flew with one guy over England. And on the way back, he had a habit of looking for ships. And he, one time, he dropped a bomb on a destroyer, a British destroyer. We had bombs that we didn’t drop in England – there was no target – so he dropped them on the ship.
He went down like a Stuka. Yeah, he flew very low, and then right before he banged into the boat he dropped the bomb and went up. I was sitting there, grass green.
That guy … we were in France, and the plane was supposed to be overhauled. We were flying to an airfield in Germany, a small airfield where they were repairing radios, mechanicals and so on. We were looking forward to some time off. You wouldn’t believe it. When we hit that airport, he made a very low pass and zipped right over the tower, where we didn’t know there was a colonel sitting. And he zipped right over the damn airfield again before we landed. When we landed, before we even got off the plane, the MP was there and arrested us.
And that colonel, he raised hell with us, that was unbelievable. And at that time, that guy was a lieutenant, and [the colonel] was going to make sure that he was going to be demoted. And he almost was demoted. The rest of the days we were staying there, we were supposed to enjoy that town and the nightclubs, and so on – we were under house arrest in the barracks.