Was the Bf 110 operable in the Russian winters?

In the winter, we had problems to get started, we had problems to get off the airfield. We were not that effective anymore. It was so cold, it was so bitter cold that if there was a truck running, it was pulling two trucks that didn’t run anymore.

It was a terrible winter. We never had seen anything like this.  And not only that, our soldiers, they weren’t equipped for that cold winter, which I never understood because we had a province in Germany, East Prussia, which had Russian climates. And they sent us into the Russian Front with cotton coats, cotton stockings to warm our feet, cotton gloves, there was nothing, nothing at all that the Russians had. During the summertime, the Russian uniform was only a shirt over their pants with a belt – that was it. And that was not a uniform at all to our men.  But during the winter they had quilted jackets, quilted coats, a coat, fur boots, the fur hats.

As for the airplanes, you had to heat them up before you could fly them. And we were retreating and in many cases, blew up the planes and just retreated.

Sometimes there was a terrible case when suddenly it warmed and the snow melted. The airplanes were standing on potato fields – that was our airfields – they sank in the mud. And then the next day it was freezing again, and they were locked in like being cemented in the ground. What could we do with them?

Blow them up when we retreated.

Was your unit withdrawn from Russia?

That’s right.  That was around the time when I was wounded.  We were shot down behind their lines, and I was wounded in my chest with a bayonet, and the pilot – who was wounded in his leg – I was dragging him along. Finally we got back to the German lines and we got into a field hospital. Then, I lost track of the pilot. The pilot survived, I met him later on. I got healed in my chest, and then they sent me to a recovery place, and then I went back to my unit.

In the meantime, my unit was so kaput that they sent us out of Russia to Munich.  Kaput, they weren’t mobile. Our whole mobile group’s trucks were all gone, most of it was gone, because they broke down in that hard winter. We were not equipped for a hard winter like this. Our trucks didn’t have any fenders anymore because of the snow buildup, and if one truck was still running, it was pulling two or three other trucks that couldn’t run anymore. Then after a while that was it.

We were not as bad [off] as the infantry. The infantry was in terrible shape. And all the miles, all the area we took from the Russians, going up to Moscow, they were taken back by Russians again.

We went back as far as Smolensk – that was the front. There was no front line like in the First World War. There was a village that was German, and the next village was Russian. There were no lines in between. When were moving back, and we had no more planes, we were walking with the infantry.

Well, when I came back to Munich, I wasn’t grounded at that time. They sent me to a sergeant school and that was a terrible place. It was like going to hell.

I made it, I would say about 80 percent through there, and then Köln [Cologne] was very heavily bombed. They released me and sent me to Köln to check on my parents. I had a chance to get a flight from Munich to Frankfurt, to an airport outside of Köln. You could see even before we got to Frankfurt, the burning in Köln. Well, anyhow, I didn’t find my parents but I found my brother, and he told me that my parents [were safe but they had left Köln]. When I went back to Munich, they were regrouping the units and getting new planes again, and after a while we went back to Russia.

Why did you become a ground-based radio operator?

I got wounded heavily, very badly, in Stalingrad. That was a couple of years later. From then on, I was grounded.

Did you get reassigned after you were grounded?

That was the same unit. That was the same flying unit I was in before, but I was in charge of the small radio unit, which was shortwave. But we also had long wave, but we handled mostly short wave.  It was 100-watt shortwave radio that I had; that one could go all around the world in short wave.

We were working with the Army, with the infantry. There were mostly artillery officers, and they were telling us where our planes should drop the bombs. That’s what we did, we were telling the planes where to drop the bombs and they were doing it that way.

It was a dangerous thing because the infantry, when they were on the attack, we were nearby in our little truck hiding behind a hill or a house. Many times we were lying on the floor in the truck behind the battery boxes, because that was a solid thing.

But I liked it that way because it gave us more freedom. And the infantry treated us very, very, well because we were protecting them.

We were mostly attacking supply lines. Behind the Russian front, where infantry was marching, or trucks were moving – shot them to pieces.  Or, we were shooting on the front line, with our machine guns, whatever was moving.

Did you prefer operating from the ground or inside the airplanes? 

On the ground, absolutely. You know, the friends that I had in the air they were not there anymore. And on the ground, we were all together, we didn’t lose anybody.

Until the end of the war.