Luftwaffe “Kamikaze” attacks

[Cott Tiger]

I’ve just been reading “Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45” by John Nichol & Tony Fennell and an interesting topic crops up regarding Luftwaffe “suicide” missions against American and British bombers in 1945.

The authors detail a last ditch and rather desperate plan (hatched by Colonel Hermann) in March 1945 to try and stop the bombers long enough to give some respite and to allow jet aircraft production to come back up to speed.

The plan was for one big assault on American Fortresses and Liberators using stripped down and ageing Junkers fighter-bombers packed with short fuse explosives or stripped down Me Bf109 fighters. These planes, manned by volunteers, would be flown into the American formations and rammed into bombers, with the pilot baling out just before impact. Hence, they were not actual “suicide” or “kamikaze” missions but still incredibly dangerous and potentially a huge chance of fatality for the pilots.

The concept was that if enough havoc could be caused and enough bombers downed then the Allies would, at least temporarily, have to cease large bombing raids over nazi Germany.

There wasn’t a shortage of volunteers as 2000 came forward and in early April the plan was put into action. However, Hermann only had a fraction of the planes he’d been promised and the level of skill needed to first of all get past the screen of Mustang fighters protecting the bomber formations (which were meant to be distracted by decoy tactic using Me-262 jets) and then to breach the defences of the gunners and to finally ram the robust bombers was vastly underestimated. A lot of the volunteers were young and fresh rookies and it was a tough ask.

Although the Eight AF lost 17 bombers that day and gave those that witnessed it unfold a bit of a fright the book concludes that the plan was a failure and that it failed to significantly hinder the operation on the day and got nowhere near to shocking the Allies into ceasing bombing Germany at will.

(information taken from Tail-End Charlies p360-365 paperback)

I’d never heard of this tactic used by the Luftaffe and was wondering if anybody had any further details or information on it.

Regards,

André

[Paddy Keating]

Seventy Luftwaffe pilots were accepted as selbstopfermänner or suicide pilots, along with some volunteers from Waffen-SS units like the SS-Jagdverbände, for training and service with the 5. Staffel of II./KG200, nicknamed the Leonidasstaffel after the the Spartan King Leonidas, who fought to the death at Thermopylae in 200 BC. They were to pilot the Fieseler Fi-103R «Reichenberg», a manned cruise missile based on the V1 "Buzzbomb" or "Flying Gas Main".

The Reichenberg project was rather controversial. Adolf Galland is reputed to have asked Hajo Hermann rather acidly at a meeting if the latter intended to lead by example. In the event, the selbstopfermänner were not sent into action and the Luftwaffe adopted alternatives like the Mistel, comprising FW190s riding piggy-back on end-of-service twin-engined aircraft, such as Ju188s, packed with explosives, which were released by the FW190 pilots and wire-guided into their targets. The FW190 pilots would then duck out and head for home.

There were also a number of ramming incidents, which sometimes proved fatal for the German pilots. Bailing out after setting the controls was one method whilst some others are said to have fitted armoured plates to their airscrews and attempted to 'chew' enemy tailpanes to pieces. I don't know how true this is, given that few Luftwaffe pilots would have exposed themselves to the concentrated fire of USAAF bomber 'box formations' for anything like the time required to line an aircraft up and smash its tailplane with one's propellor.

Heinz Knoke - http://www.heinzknokewebsite.com/My-Site/Main_Lilo.htm - pioneered a far more effective and less risky method of dealing with USAAF Flying Fortress box formations by dropping time-fused bombs into the middle of such 'boxes', for which he was bawled out by his squadron commander but telephoned and congratulated by Hermann Göring. This tactic is believed to brought down quite a few American bombers for no direct Luftwaffe losses.

PK

[TPMM]

Heinz Knokke in his book I Flew for the Führer describes the tactic you've mentioned on pages 97f (in Polish edition - maybe it'd be easier for You to find this by dates).
They came across and idea - 28 II 1943.
He "bombed down" his first bomber - 22 III 1943.
Group attack with bombs - 17 IV 1943 and following.

Another idea, not exactly suicide, but "semi-suicide": a specially fitted He-177 Greif was about to approach a "combat box" from below and launch a salvo of rockets from special tubes mounted on it's wing. Would be possible? Maybe yes, if not for a little problem caused by escort fighters.

[panzermahn]

2 weeks ago I watched the History Channel's Luftwaffe Deadliest Missions and there were two interviews with two German Sonderkommando Elbe pilots who managed to bail out and survive a ramming attack on American bombers (I believed one of them was a B-24 Liberator "Palace of Dallas"). They mentioned that they volunteered to sacrifice for the Fatherland under attack by the Anglo-American terror bombing. Another interesting fact is that one of the German pilots actually flipped his BF-109 so that in the event of ramming, it is higher possibility to bail out.

However, I think the most vulnerable spot in the American bombers was the cockpit. If the BF-109 could just ram his propeller to the cockpit, it would be extremely devastating (killing the pilot and co-pilot).

Antony Beevor mentioned about Sonderkommando Elbe attacks against Soviet bridgeheads at Oder river in 1945 but it was a failure with the lost of 4 Sonderkommando Elbe pilots. Anyone knew about this?

Thanks
Panzermahn

[Cott Tiger]

Thanks for the extra info guys.

It's intrigued me and I think I'll look into a little further.

Cheers,

André