The Ju 290A-1 returned to the Eastern Front, where it remained until early February 1943, but worsening conditions on the ground combined with the appalling sub-zero conditions meant that it became all but impossible to continue making any meaningful flights. Eventually, Stalingrad and 6.Armee were lost, with 91,000 survivors passing into Soviet captivity.
By the spring of 1943, the Axis war effort in North Africa had become increasingly precarious. During the final months of the previous year, the Germans had pulled back towards Tunisia pursued by the British Eighth Army, and the Allies had landed in North-West Africa in Operation Torch, opening up a second front. It was therefore decided to establish a bridgehead at Tunis.
The Luftwaffe was at full stretch assisting Rommel in attacking the enemy invasion front and convoys off the North-West African coast and ports, in engaging the enemy air forces in the Algiers area and in maintaining and protecting the air routes between Italy, Sicily, Tripoli and Gabes/Tunis along which transports flew.14 Transport missions were flown daily to the Tunis bridgehead, flying in replacement troops, aviation fuel, air-to-ground and Flak ordnance, anti-tank munitions and general supplies, while on the return flights Ju 52/3ms and a handful of Me 323s airlifted out wounded personnel and empty fuel drums. Then in late December 1942, several of the Mediterranean-based transport Gruppen were ordered to relocate urgently to Russia to assist with the crisis at Stalingrad, leaving a force of 200 Ju 52/3ms to maintain supply flights to German forces in Tunisia, along with 15 Me 323s and a force of Regia Aeronautica SM.81s and SM.82s. On 18 January 1943, however, the Luftwaffe suffered a blow at Tunis when no fewer than 23 Ju 52/3ms were destroyed on the ground during an Allied air raid. Tripoli was taken by Montgomery five days later. From February 1943 onwards, it was no longer a question of stemming the tide, but how long the inevitable could be held off. Yet the transports continued to fly determinedly despite increasing numbers of Allied fighters. Rommel left North Africa in early March, never to return, and in May the two armies comprising Heeresgruppe Afrika under Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim disintegrated into isolated pools of resistance.
In order to shore up the Luftwaffe transport effort, at least two Ju 290A-1s – Wk-Nr 290110152 SB+QB, which had been repaired after suffering the aforementioned heavy damage during the Stalingrad airlift, and the newly delivered Wk-Nr 290110154 SB+QD – were handed over to Lufttransportstaffel (LTS) 290. LTS 290 had been established at Tempelhof in January 1943 as a specialist four-engined transport unit, which operated under the direct control of the OKL. Known initially as the Transporterstaffel Berlin-Tempelhof under Hauptmann d.R. Hans Haumann, who had previously flown Ju52/3ms with KGr.z.b.V.107, command was passed after only a short time to Hauptmann Heinz Braun, a former Fw 200 pilot with 7./KG 40 who had suffered wounds while attacking enemy shipping in the Atlantic in 1940.15 The Staffel also numbered most of the available Ju 90s, the Ju 252 V5 and an unarmed Fw 200, as well as an armed C-5, and a small number of Italian Piaggio P.108 bombers. It would deploy its aircraft from Grosseto, some 150 km north of Rome on the Italian west coast, on transport missions to supply German forces in North Africa.
The Ju 290s, with their comparatively vast payloads, may have been a welcome sight to the men of Heeresgruppe Afrika, but their abilities were severely put to the test. Conditions in Tunisia were far from ideal: large aircraft such as the Ju 290 could really only be effective in conditions of air supremacy, with adequately prepared landing grounds and local military stability, none of which was the case in the Tunis area.16
On 7 April 1943, the Ju 290 Wk-Nr 0152, piloted once more by Major Wiskandt, suffered 50 per cent damage when it crash-landed at Megrine, just outside Tunis, and the aircraft was subsequently abandoned. Three weeks later on 1 May, Ju 290A-1 Wk-Nr 0154, re-coded as J4+AH and flown by Hauptmann Kurt Vogel, endured similar damage at Sidi Ahmed, south-west of Bizerta, and was also abandoned; it had been delivered by Junkers only in February.
Simultaneous to the Ju 290’s deployment to Russia and North Africa was the request in the spring of 1943 from Oberst Karl-Henning von Barsewisch, the General der Aufklärungsflieger, for 12 Ju 290s to be built as long-range reconnaissance machines. However, this idea was quashed by the Technisches Amt in March 1943 on the basis that at that stage of the war, what was more urgently needed was fighters, particularly Fw 190s, to defend the skies over the Reich and the occupied territories, and to deal with the increasing threat from the Allied strategic air forces in the West as well as the ever-strengthening Soviet Air Forces in the East. Furthermore, it was the view of those in the Technical Office that a suggestion to increase the number of Ju 290s in 1944 from 86 machines to 174 could be carried out only at the expense of Fw 190 production. Even a proposal to convert four Ju 290 transports as reconnaissance aircraft was rejected.
However, in effect, the Ju 290 owed its survival to Grossadmiral Dönitz. As has been related in Chapter One, as the Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, Hitler favoured Dönitz and trusted his judgement, and, with enemy convoys in the Atlantic now operating beyond the range of the Fw 200, Dönitz had made a strong case to the Führer for the urgent need for increased longer-range air reconnaissance to contribute to the steadily worsening state of the U-boat war.17 As Ju 290 historians Karl Kössler and Günther Ott note, this ‘obviously had its effect’.18 The decision to halt further work on the Ju 290 was reversed.
Thus, as early as March 1943, the aircraft development department at the Technisches Amt issued an order to Junkers to produce no fewer than 30 Umrüstsätze (conversion kits) with which to convert Ju 290A-1 transporters into long-range reconnaissance aircraft, or Fernerkunder. Furthermore, with immediate effect, three transporters that were already under construction – Wk-Nrs 0157, 0158 and 0159 – were to be changed on the assembly line to a preliminary reconnaissance variant, the A-2, while all subsequent aircraft from Wk-Nr 0160 would be built as the new long-range reconnaissance Ju 290A-3.19 This machine was intended to initially supplement, and ultimately to replace, the more limited range and slower Fw 200 in the long-range maritime reconnaissance role. Indeed, in a study of April 1944, one senior Luftwaffe staff officer commented on the value of seizing the Azores and French possessions in West Africa in order to obtain bases for the offensive against enemy shipping: ‘From these bases,’ he wrote, ‘Ju 290s could reach almost to the American coast and enemy convoy traffic would be under the constant observation of the Luftwaffe for the greater part of its crossing. The immediate result would have been a great increase in sinkings.’20
Hans-Joachim Pancherz undertook the first flights in the three Ju 290 A-2s, coded SB+QG (0157), SB+QH (0158) and SB+QI (0159), in May and June 1943. Powered by BMW 801Ls, the aircraft were fitted with additional radio equipment and FuG 200 Hohentwiel air-to-surface vessel search radar for sea reconnaissance work, with extra armament in the form of a second, electric-hydraullically operated HDL 151 dorsal turret. The ensuing five-aircraft Ju 290A-3 series, all test-flown by Eduard Dautzenberg, was similar to the A-2, but was installed with more powerful 1,700 hp BMW 801Ds together with a Focke-Wulf Fw 20 reduced-drag, lower-profile aft dorsal gun turret and improved gondola design. Additionally, both the A-2 and A-3 carried a single MG 151 in the tail operated by a prone gunner, accessible from inside the fuselage. This ‘tail’ turret had a traverse of 60°, with an elevation of 45° above and 60° below the horizontal. In the case of the A-3, provision was made to mount manually operated MG 131s in left and right waist positions, which could be easily removed and stowed in the fuselage when not in use. The A-3 also featured additional armour for the pilots’ area, weapons stands and engines, and carried FuG 10 and FuG 16Z VHF transceivers, FuG 200 radar (see Chapter Five), and a rubber dinghy contained in purpose-built fuselage accommodation.21
As far as Dönitz and the Kriegsmarine were concerned, these aircraft were needed out in the Atlantic and could not come quickly enough. With progress now under way, the next requirement was for experienced and capable crews to fly them.
CHAPTER THREE
EYES OVER THE EASTERN FRONT
The reconnaissance observer (long-range) needs to be primarily trained in navigation, instrument flying, high-altitude flying, and in aerial photography. His employment is essential in aerial warfare…
Generaloberst Oswald Lutz, Zusammenarbeit zwischen Panzertruppe und Luftwaffe (Cooperation between armoured troups and the Luftwaffe), 12 September 1936
As crucial to the overall German war effort on the Eastern Front as the Luftwaffe’s fighter, dive-bomber, bomber and ground-attack operations were, those conducted by the long-range air reconnaissance units were of equally vital importance.
One such unit was the 3.(F) Staffel of Aufklärungsgruppe 10 (‘F’ was for Fern – long-range). In November 1942, 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 was based at Tazinskaya in southern Russia, some 250 km south-west of Stalingrad and equipped mainly with the Junkers Ju 88D-1, as well as some D-2s and D-5s – the reconnaissance variant of the Luftwaffe’s new twin-engined Schnellbomber. On paper, the unit formed part of FAGr 4 based at Mariupol, but in practice it operated semi-autonomously in support of 4.Panzerarmee in its operations in the Don bend. This was a difficult time for German forces on the Eastern Front. By mid-November, the German line in the southern sector stretched from Voronezh at its northernmost point to Elista and Essentuki in the south, curving back to Novorossisk on the Black Sea – a vast area of conquest won by the Wehrmacht in just six months. In the centre of this line was the city of Stalingrad on the River Volga, most of which 6.Armee had taken in fierce fighting in October. Indeed, by mid-November, General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW – Supreme Command of the Armed Forces), believed the city to be ‘practically conquered’. Some 6.5 km of the Volga bank had been secured and the Soviets pushed back to the fortified riverbank with the enemy command sliced in two.1 However, on the morning of 19 November, as Hitler and his generals were distracted by the Allied landings in Tunisia, the Soviet South-Western and Don fronts, followed the next day by the Stalingrad Front, launched Operation Uranus, a fierce counter-offensive involving more than one million men, 13,500 guns and mortars, and 100 rocket batteries, designed to lock and trap 6.Armee within the bomb- and shell-shattered ruins of Stalingrad. To those with sufficient precognition, the appalling spectre of the sudden loss of Stalingrad and the prospect of the entrapment of an entire army was looming.
Tasked with providing vital short- and long-range reconnaissance over this sector were the four Staffeln of Aufklärungsgruppe 10 ‘Tannenberg’. The Gruppe had been awarded the honour title in commemoration of the battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, which saw a great victory for German forces over the Russians. The 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10, under the command of Major Horst Klinger, had been formed in November 1938 from elements of 3./Aufkl.Gr.11 at Neuhausen in East Prussia and equipped initally with Dornier Do 17Fs – a field-modified reconnaissance variant of the slim, twin-engined Do 17E bomber, powered by twin 750 hp BMW VI 7.3D inline engines. In addition to a pair of cameras, the F-1 could carry a 4,500-kg bomb load and had increased fuel capacity.
By 1942, like many Luftwaffe flying units, it had experienced a ‘busy’ war thus far. The unit first saw operations during the campaign in Poland in 1939, in which it fell under the control of a Koluft (Kommandeur der Luftwaffe bei einem Armeeoberkommando – Luftwaffe Commander assigned to an Army command), a senior Luftwaffe officer, usually of the rank of Generalmajor or Oberst, who was attached to the staff of an Army command and who exercised direct command over all air units assigned to that command – usually short-range reconnaissance, signals and Flak formations. He would be responsible for keeping the army informed of the results of reconnaissance operations in his sector.2 In this case 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 took its orders from Generalmajor Victor Krocker, the Koluft Heeresgruppe Nord, and operated as a reconnaissance unit for General der Artillerie Georg von Küchler’s 3.Armee. The Staffel was transferred to Oberbruch-Süd in February 1940 in readiness for operations in the West. From Oberbruch its new, improved Do 17Ms and Ps, fitted respectively with Bramo 323A-1 and BMW 132 radial engines, flew missions over the Netherlands and later over the English Channel monitoring shipping and British coastal fortifications. During the German assault in the West in May, operating under the direction of the Koluft 6, Oberst Günther Lohmann, they provided reconnaissance support for the amoured formations of Panzergruppe Kleist as they thrust through Belgium and northern France, before moving successively in June to fields at Savy, Saint-Mard, La Fortelle, Vimeroy, Orleans, and La Nieppe in the Pas de Calais, from where observation missions were again flown over the Channel for German coastal artillery until May 1941.
That month the Staffel was transferred to Jüterbog-Damm in eastern Germany where, under the command of Hauptmann Bruno Rainer, it prepared for its part in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Next 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 moved to Neudorf, near Oppeln in Silesia, where its crews underwent final operational preparations under Generalmajor Karl Drum, the Koluft Heeresgruppe Süd, under whom it would work in support of the drive east by Heeresgruppe Süd on the southern sector of the German advance. By this stage, the Staffel was equipped with nine aircraft and three reserve machines, and was primed for operations in the vast expanses of the Soviet Union, being able to draw upon a fleet of around 30–50 heavy support vehicles. It had a strength of some 320 officers and men. At the beginning of June 1941, however, 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 moved farther east to Rzeszow-Jasionka in Poland and, following the commencement of Barbarossa on 22 June, it had transferred to Berditschew.
For the rest of 1941, and based initially at Starokonstantinow and then Zhytomir, the Staffel carried out longer-range reconnaissance missions in direct cooperation, through the Koluft, with the staffs of Heeresgruppe Süd.3 ‘Targets’ included the photographing of enemy troop movements and concentrations behind the main battle area, roads, railways, bridges and the traffic passing over them, airfield activity, towns and factories.4 These missions involved the Dorniers climbing to an altitude of between 3500 and 6000 m and making course directly for the target area, but as Soviet air opposition gradually stiffened, operational altitudes had to increase to 6500–8000 m. The crews of the Staffel were briefed to avoid combat if at all possible, but in case of attack by the enemy, the tactic was to make for home, dropping altitude rapidly in a series of violent evasive turns.5
In September 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 was operating from Lviv (Lemberg) in the western Ukraine, and in November it moved much farther east to Mariuopol on the Sea of Azov in the area of Luftflotte 4.
At the beginning of 1942, the Staffel handed over its Do 17s and was briefly pulled back to Ohlau in Silesia, where it converted to the new and much vaunted, high-speed Ju 88D-1. Powered by a pair of 1,350 hp Junkers Jumo 211J-1 or J-2 engines, the Ju 88D-1 was based on the A-4 fast-bomber and was able to carry the same external stores, including long-range drop tanks, but was fitted with remotely controlled Rb 50/30 high-altitude and/or Rb 20/30 low-altitude cameras in various combinations mounted in the fuselage immediately aft of the bomb-bay. Extra internal fuel tanks were fitted instead of a forward bomb-bay. The Ju 88D-1 quickly became the most common reconnaissance variant.6
Still under the command of Major Rainer, 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 then returned to Russia from late January 1942, assigned to FAGr 4 under Major Friedrich Alpers as its parent unit, operating from Poltawa in central Ukraine until June.7
In the late spring of 1942, the tactical chain of command for Luftwaffe reconnaissance operations was revised and saw the end of the Koluft system. The Koluft was replaced by the Flivo (Fliegerverbindungsoffizier – Air Liaison Officer), usually a field-grade officer with the rank of Oberst who was assigned to an army group, army or Panzer Army. The Flivo and his small staff held no command over local air units, but rather acted as a liaison between the regional army and air force commands, as well as preparing situation reports for the Luftwaffe and passing on requests for reconnaissance on behalf of the Wehrmacht. Unde
r such a set-up, the deployment and decisions relating to long-range reconnaissance operations conducted by units such as 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 remained within the domain of the Luftflotte command.
The Ju 88s tended to fly from their bases at very low level and then climb to around 9000 m as the target was approached. Once the required photographs had been taken, they would immediately turn for home, returning once more to low altitude.
The crews of 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10, each comprising pilot, observer/navigator, flight engineer/gunner and radio operator, became very experienced at these kind of missions, and several pilots, including Oberleutnante Herbert Abel and Hans Ascheid, and Leutnant Günther Korn, were awarded the Ehrenpokal (Honour Goblet) ‘For Special Achievement in the Air War’.8 All of these pilots would go on to fly long-range missions over the Atlantic with FAGr 5.
In August 1942, 3.(F)/Aufkl.Gr.10 moved to Kharkov and then south again to Mariupol, from where long-range missions were flown on behalf of the army to targets in the Don bend, for example, to obtain photographs of the railway lines leading to Saratow, the fighting in the area around Stalingrad, and as far east as Astrakhan and the Northern Caucasus. The dangers of such missions were highlighted when the Ju 88D of Oberleutnant Hugo Oechsle went missing in action from Tazinskaya in December.9 But with the aforementioned Soviet counter-offensive, which commenced in November, on 21 December, the Staffel was forced to abandon its base at Tazinskaya, the more fortunate members of the unit’s personnel escaping in the unit’s motor vehicles, the less fortunate resorting to a long march on foot as far as Rostov. All but three of the eight Ju 88D-1s and D-5s of the Staffel were left behind.
Shadow over the Atlantic Page 6
