Did you fly with him through most of the war?
No. I would say for several months. Then I had a pilot that was a corporal. You know, in the German air force you didn’t have to be an officer to be a pilot. You could be a corporal or you could be anything.
A Bf 110 of ZG 26 is prepared for a sortie in the Western Desert. Bundesarchive photo
That lieutenant I mentioned – he was flying as a squadron leader, where they had captains as pilots, but he was the leader, because he was so damned good.
Did you ever have to bail out of the airplane?
Yes, once. I was temporarily teaching radio operations at a reserve unit in Westfalia that had only three airplanes. Due to injuries, I wasn’t supposed to fly anymore, but the radioman for one plane was gone for some reason, so they put me in his place. I only flew with that reserve group a few times.
I just told the pilot to dive, dive, dive! And we got the hell out of there right away. That was a shaky moment.
The first time, the plane had engine problems and couldn’t start. Back then, a lot of planes were having engine problems and were not getting off the ground. Goering’s order was if a plane could be fixed soon, it had to go up.
Our plane was fixed about a half-hour later, and we had to go up by ourselves. The pilot I had was good; he was a sergeant. The ground control gave us directions to rejoin our other planes and find the enemy. There were low clouds that day, and we couldn’t see a damned thing. The clouds went up to about 10,000 feet.
After a while in the clouds I looked up from the console, and I could see a shadow directly above our plane. The shadow got bigger, and pretty soon I could see someone inside the shadow. It was an American sitting in the ball turret of his airplane, staring at me. We were so close, that I think we were both shocked by the sight of each other – he didn’t shoot, and I couldn’t shoot either. I just told the pilot to dive, dive, dive! And we got the hell out of there right away. That was a shaky moment.
Once the Messerschmitt Bf 110 was withdrawn from front line fighter service it found success as a ground attack aircraft and night fighter. San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives photo
After a long time, we climbed back up, and we were right in the middle of a ball of American planes. The air was black with airplanes. So we dove again, but they were all shooting at us. The pilot got wounded – wounded in his arm – so we started heading back. Pretty soon there was German flak shooting at us [laughs], but we made it back that day.
The next time, we got hit by our own antiaircraft fire. So the pilot and I parachuted out. When we got to the ground, there was a crowd of civilians ready to beat us up because they thought we were the enemy. These people had been bombed and lost family, and they were ready [to get their hands on an aircrew]. At first they didn’t listen to us when we said we were Germans. That actually happened a lot to German aircrews, because our flight uniforms didn’t have any insignia for a long time. They gave us a ribbon to wear around our arms that said we were with the German air forces.
How did the Bf 110’s role change when the British started night bombing?
When the British started flying bombers during the night, we didn’t have any radars at that time, so we had to go by sound and spotlights to catch them. And [if our spotlights] caught the planes, the [antiaircraft guns] were beating on them with flak. Our 88s were very good. That was the only defense they had at that time.
Then, early in the war, we developed the night fighters. It was the 110 which was developed as the night fighter.
I volunteered to be in a night fighter, but they didn’t take me.