Shadow over the Atlantic

by Robert Forsyth

  Adolf Hitler’s birthday on 20 April was officially marked at Mont de Marsan by an award ceremony, at which Hermann Fischer was promoted to Major. This was followed by an evening celebration attended by the senior officers and staff of the Gruppe.20

  On 24 April, Major Fischer and his crew flew in a Ju 290, which was also loaded with one of the unit’s Czech-made Tatra tow lorries, to the Ergänzungs-Fernaufklärungsgruppe at Posen under the command of Oberst Gerhard Kopper, from where he liaised with the 27.Unterseebootsflottille to set up new forms of U-boat cooperation training. Three other Junkers followed and for most of May, the FAGr 5 crews were based at the former commercial airport of Danzig-Langfuhr in Poland. From there, along with crews and aircraft from III./KG 40, they carried out exercises in tactics and equipment coordination from the airfields at Hexengrund, Heiligenbeil, Jesau, Grieslienen and Könisgberg. Somewhat strangely, the Ju 290s involved – A-2 Wk-Nr 0157 9V+BK, A-4 Wk-Nr 0167 9V+HK, A-5 Wk-Nr 0173 9V+CK and A-5 Wk-Nr 0172 9V+BH, to be joined later by A-2 Wk-Nr 0158 9V+AH – were all older models rather than the new A-7s.21

  At the beginning of May, temperatures in western France increased dramatically and the ground became parched and arid. Because Mont de Marsan airport was surrounded by woods, smoking was forbidden. The month opened with a visit from General der Flieger Stefan Fröhlich, an experienced air commander who had once served as the Fliegerführer Afrika, and who was deputizing briefly for the commander of Luftflotte 3, Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle. Schmidt described Fröhlich as ‘friendly, calm and businesslike’, but he stressed to the men of the long-range reconnaissance unit the prospect and dangers of an anticipated Allied invasion, especially with the improved weather and full moon.

  During May 1944, FAGr 5’s technical personnel were trained in how to handle Ju 290s with the heavy towing vehicles to hand, so that the unit’s aircraft could be moved quickly in the event of an emergency. According to Schmidt, ‘All anti-invasion measures were taken. Everyone was on full alert.’ As if to validate this policy, on the 5th, Mont de Marsan was strafed by enemy long-range fighters and a shot-up Ju 88 crash-landed in flames on the airfield. A few days later, a large fire broke out close to the runway, causing danger to munitions, fuel and equipment. Arson was suspected.

  Nerves became frayed. An officer pilot from 2.Staffel committed suicide in the mess, followed shortly after by an Unteroffizier in the Stabskompanie who shot himself for reasons unknown. The men were buried in the airfield cemetery.22

  On the 16th, another senior officer arrived at Mont de Marsan in the form of Oberstleutnant Henning Wilcke from the staff of Holle’s X.Fliegerkorps, but simultaneously serving as Operations Officer on the staff of the Fliegerführer Atlantik. During a discussion with the officers of 1./FAGr 5, Wilcke ordered that in view of the fact that U-boat convoy operations were very unlikely in the immediate future, the Gruppe was to stand down for a period of ten days to 26 May – a strange edict given that no long-range reconnaissance missions had been flown for some time!23

  However, in the late evening of 17 May, after a break of several days, over-water flights recommenced: one Ju 290 was picked up by Allied listeners flying coastal security reconnaissance, followed by another on a similar sortie the following evening, while on the morning of the 19th, two Ju 290s were involved in radio exercises with three Kriegsmarine surface ships in the Bay of Biscay.24 That night, Ju 290A-7 9V+FH, piloted by Hellmut Nagel of 1./FAGr 5, was airborne again when it departed Mont de Marsan at 2130 hrs on a security reconnaissance over the Biscay. Ninety minutes into the flight, however, one of its engines failed, but it continued with its mission, returning at 0730 hrs in the morning after a 2,500-km flight lasting ten hours!25

  The middle of the month also saw a return to limited convoy reconnaissance operations. The absence of any meaningful form of U-boat operations in the Atlantic at this time suggests that it must have been intended to fly these missions as reconnaissance for air attack by the He 177s of KG 40.

  On the 22nd, two Ju 290s, ‘D’ and ‘F’, took off during the mid-afternoon for reconnaissance to the west and south-west of Spain. The day before, the northbound convoy SL.158, which had departed Freetown on the 11th, comprising 26 merchants and three escorts, rendezvoused with MKS.49 en route from Port Said and Gibraltar. The combined convoy totalled around 45 vessels plus four escorts, two submarines, a rescue vessel and an oiler.26 It had also been joined by the British-built escort carrier HMS Nairana, which, although in need of a refit and capable of only 15 knots, carried 835 NAS, a composite squadron equipped with Swordfish and Sea Hurricane IICs.27 It was probably this convoy that the Junkers’ FuG 200 Hohentwiel picked up shortly after 2200 hrs in 23° West 1630. The crews later reported that the convoy was ‘spread out over 10–15 km.’28 One Swordfish pilot on board Nairana recalled the conditions the convoy faced that day: ‘The weather was foul – mountainous seas, gale-force winds, low cloud and minimal visibility.’29 The Junkers made it back to Mont de Marsan at 0230 hrs and 0430 hrs respectively.30

  The next day, it seems FAGr 5 aircraft did not go out into the Atlantic, and the task of shadowing the convoy fell to a Bv 222 of 1./SAGr 129 from Biscarosse which, like the Ju 290s, picked up the convoy by radar.31

  On the 25th, FAGr 5 intensified its efforts against SL.158/MKS.49 when it despatched two Junkers from Mont de Marsan in the early afternoon. At 2038 hrs, Nairana reported detecting an enemy aircraft ‘in the neighbourhood of the convoy’. At 2045 hrs, the Ju 290s reported the convoy as 54 merchant vessels, three destroyers and one aircraft carrier, course 360°, at six knots.32 By 2100 hrs, Nairana had increased the call of enemy aircraft to four, of which one was firmly identified as a Ju 290, but they had all departed by 2109 hrs. However, the convoy reported being shadowed by another Ju 290 from 2239 hrs; this was the new A-7 Wk-Nr 0187 9V+LK of 2./FAGr 5 and it was ‘attacked by fighters without observed results’ which were probably Sea Hurricanes of 835 NAS operating from the carrier. Certainly, two Sea Hurricanes flown by Lieutenant Allen R. Burgham, RNZNVR, and Sub-lieutenant Charles Richardson, RNVR, were flown off to intercept and opened fire on an enemy aircraft before it escaped into cloud, after which its presence disappeared from the carrier’s radar screen.33 As Burgham recounted:

  In the afternoon Nairana began refuelling a frigate. While this was taking place Nairana picked up a radar contact and ordered ‘Scramble Two Fighters’. Richardson and I manned our aircraft and prepared to take off. Nairana continued with the refuelling as we sat in our cockpits ready to go! Shortly thereafter a Ju 290 approached from astern and flew fairly low over the starboard side. I remember feeling extremely frustrated. I am not 100 per cent sure of the timing of these next events, but after the refuelling was interrupted or completed, the radar had another contact and Richardson and I were scrambled and vectored to intercept. After a while, but a little too soon, the Fighter Direction Officer gave us a change of course onto a reciprocal, thinking we had passed the target. I turned to starboard when Charles, who by this time had been obscured by my wing, shouted ‘Tally Ho’, and whipped into a turn to Port. Not seeing the target or knowing its relative position, I tightened my turn and saw a Ju 290 diving for cloud, being chased by Richardson, firing at its disappearing bulk. The 290 soon disappeared from the screen and, as the light was fast fading, we were directed back to the ship.34

  The 26th would see one Ju 290 ‘D’ conduct a meteorological flight between 24° West 526 to 34° West 106–335–542, turning for its return course at 1200 hrs. Such flights had become more commonplace since the weather-reporting Staffel of the Luftwaffe covering the Atlantic coast, Wekusta 2, based at Nantes, had been withdrawn to the Reich at the end of March 1944 to re-equip from its Ju 88s to longer-range He 177s. The aircraft of FAGr 5, along with those of KG 40 and Wekusta 51 at Toussus in northern France, had taken over such duties during Wekusta 2’s absence.35

  The main effort on the 26th, however, came from at least three Ju 290s which carried out shadowing sorties in the eastern Atlantic,
but it would prove to be another costly day. Taking off from Mont de Marsan in the early morning hours, Ju 290A-5 WK-Nr 0178 9V+DK, flown by Oberleutnant Günther Pfeiffer with Hauptmann Helmut Miersch as commander, and one of the Gruppe’s new Ju 290A-7s, Wk-Nr 0188 9V+FK of 2.Staffel, commanded and flown by Oberleutnant Hans-Georg Bretnütz, with Unteroffizier Wolfgang Bock as second pilot, headed south towards SL.158/MKS.49. Around sunrise, Bretnütz’s now lone Junkers reached the area of the convoy.

  HMS Nairana had been with the convoy since 19 May. As (then Lieutenant-Commander) E.E. ‘Barry’ Barringer, commander of 835 NAS, wrote: ‘The protection of this large, slow and vulnerable convoy was our most demanding and eventful operation to date. The weather was bad: strong winds, heavy seas and low cloud, which meant that flying (and particularly flying at night) was never easy.’36

  Shortly after 0700 hrs, the Ju 290 was in 40° 55´ North 18° 25´ West as it flew off the convoy’s starboard beam at low altitude in order to avoid radar detection.37 The weather had improved somewhat and the cloud had lifted, but very soon the carrier’s fighter direction team picked up the shadower. On the flight deck of Nairana, wary of the likely presence of enemy aircraft, Lieutenant Burgham and Sub-Lieutenant Richardson were strapped into their Sea Hurricanes. Burgham recalled:

  Shortly after standing to and before breakfast, at 0730, as I well remember, Richardson [Sea Hurricane IIc JS304] and I (this time I was flying in [Sea Hurricane IIc] NF672/7K ‘Nicki’), were scrambled again to investigate a contact. Some distance out on the convoy’s starboard bow, we saw a Ju 290 which must have just descended to sea level to escape convoy detection. We were at 2,000 or 3,000 ft and decided to separate so that we could attack him from opposite sides. He soon saw us and turned away, putting Richardson in a position to attack first. As he committed himself to a diving attack, the Junkers took the usual evasive action by turning towards him, making it difficult for him to get a bead on it. This meant that the 290 was turning away from me and put me in an excellent position to attack. As I approached it, I could see Charles Richardson closing in astern in a very tight turn, when his wing tip hit a wave and he exploded in a ball of oily flame. As the Junkers began a turn towards me, I came within range, opened fire and began to see pieces falling from the aircraft which climbed a little, then nosed over into the sea, where it exploded.

  I checked for survivors, then went to circle the oil slick where Charles’ Hurricane had gone in. I could see what appeared to be his ‘Mae West’, but no sign of life. I circled the site until a Swordfish arrived to ‘home-in’ an escort vessel. As I circled Richardson’s oil patch I began to reflect on what had all happened so quickly and realized that the flashes emerging from various parts of the enemy aircraft, that I had thought nothing of at the time, had actually been muzzle flashes from its guns! It made me realize that this was a little different from all the dummy attacks we used to make on poor innocent aircraft around the skies of the U.K. Before I returned to Nairana I dived ‘Nicki’ on the remains of the Ju 290 to alert the Swordfish to its position.38

  In another account, Burgham recalled the moments after he witnessed Richardson’s aircraft explode: ‘I pressed home my own attack, hitting the Junkers repeatedly at close range. It crashed into the sea and exploded. All that remained of the Junkers was an oil slick and a few floating pieces of debris.’39

  Ju 290A-7 9V+FK came down at 41° 03´ North 18° 37´ West and was a total loss. Its crew of pilots Oberleutnant Bretnütz and Unteroffizier Bock, along with Leutnant Hans Mahs (observer), Feldwebel Fritz Wiens, Obergefreiter Friedrich Bauer (radio-operators), Gefreiter Eduard Mrowczynski (flight engineer), Unteroffizier Wilhelm Bruckhaus, Unteroffizier Herbert Möller, Obergefreiter Karl Horn and Gefreiter Karl Unger (gunners), were killed. An additional crewman – Unteroffizier Otto Schimank – was believed to have been on board the Junkers and lost his life, making this a loss of 11 men.40

  Miersch and Pfeiffer’s aircraft managed to return safely.41

  Meanwhile, back at Mont de Marsan, two more crews were hurriedly called from their billets and briefed to fly to SL.158/MKS.49 to report its composition and course. At around 1100 hrs, two Ju 290s of 1./FAGr 5, one with the Staffelkapitän, Hauptmann Josef Augustin, on board as commander, with Hauptmann Willi Pawlittke as first pilot, the other commanded and flown by Leutnant Kurt Nonnenberg, took off in an attempt to fly in the new, two-aircraft tactical formation, spaced at 50 m apart, for mutual protection. To conserve available aircraft, Nonnenberg’s crew had borrowed a Junkers of 2.Staffel, the A-4 Wk-Nr 0164 9V+GK, one of the original machines to be delivered to the Gruppe while it was forming up at Achmer.42 The Junkers’ task, like that of the ill-fated crew of Hans-Georg Bretnütz, was to shadow SL.158/MKS.49. Such was the importance attached to their mission, that for the first time, the Ju 290s were given an escort of Ju 88C-6s from ZG 1 which flew with them as far as Cape Ortegal before turning back.43

  As Josef Augustin recalled:

  A ship convoy in the area west of Portugal (approximately 12° West) was to be assessed, with the number of ships, composition, course etc., and we were to report the information via radio, and for the first time this Atlantic reconnaissance was to be carried out with two aircraft … The aircraft flew together and also for the first time on the outward flight across the Bay of Biscay, we were escorted by a Ju 88 Zerstörerstaffel.44

  Both aircraft were fitted with FuG 200, and at least one was carrying a Schwan automatic D/F buoy. They made their way as a pair at about 400 m, with Hauptmann Pawlittke leading.45 The Ju 88s stayed with them as far as the coast of Spain, as Augustin remembered: ‘The Zerstörer had picked us up at Arcachon, on the coast, west of Bordeaux, and escorted both Ju 290s as far as the cliffs of the north-western coast of Spain, near Cape Ortegal, where, with a waggle of their wings, they left us. With their protection, the flight across the Biscay had been very calm and not so strained.’

  The two Ju 290s were now some 2500 km from their base and over the Atlantic. They had been in the air for over six hours:

  Once the fighters left us, we went down to 200 m. Since we were far out over the sea, we had to maintain complete radio silence, and we had to carry out our long approach flight [to the convoy] using astro-navigation. Once we had got to within an estimated 70 km of the convoy, I gave the order to climb to 1000 m so as to fly search circles. Actually, there were already a large number of large and small blips on the screen of the Hohentwiel equipment.

  The theory was that, using its FuG 200, a Ju 290 would fly a series of up to 19 ‘search circles’. The aircraft would fly to a designated point over the sea, switch on its radar and ‘sweep’ a ‘circle’ of 80-km diameter, then switch off. It would then fly a straight course, to a point 80 km farther on, and repeat the procedure, meaning that the radius of the new circle overlapped with the sea surface area representing the radius of the previous circle. A third and fourth circle would be swept and overlapped, at which point the aircraft would turn 90° to port and fly 160 km before activating its next sweep in the first circle of a new row of four circles running in parallel to the row of the three just covered. This meant, however, that the new circle and the last did not overlap. At the end of that row, the aircraft would again change course, and fly another row of four circles, before turning again for a fourth and final row. This way, the aircraft would sweep a net of 19 circles in three rows of five and one of four, covering an area of sea c.500 km by 480 km.

  However, even before the U-boats had left the Atlantic, the function of ‘shadowing’, as it had been known, had been abandoned to a great extent owing to the danger posed by increasing numbers of enemy carrier-based aircraft; thus, from the early spring of 1944, most Ju 290 pilots flying lone sorties chose simply to circle a convoy at a respectable distance, some making their approaches at low altitude from the west to make their observations.

  When two Ju 290s operated, and the weather conditions were clear, they would fly at a height of between 20 and 40 m, and close together for mutual pro
tection as per recently established tactical doctrine. In cloudy weather, the aircraft would fly at a greater distance apart. The normal search method in clear conditions was a creeping line ahead, with a distance of up to 50 km between legs; on searches of this kind, the FuG 200 was not necessarily employed. In poor visibility or cloud, the search took the form of a direct course outwards and a parallel homeward course at a distance of 100 km from the outward course. In this type of search, the Hohentwiel was activated at intervals of 50–60 km, when the aircraft rose to make a rate one searching turn, resuming its original course at sea level.46

  Meanwhile, HMS Nairana had remained on a high state of alert, as Barry Barringer recorded:

  In the afternoon there were more shadowers … By now there was a great deal of cloud about and a little before 1600 hrs two aircraft were detected coming in from the east at 5,000 ft. Lt Stephen ‘Sam’ Mearns [in NF698/7D] and S/Lt Frank Wallis, who were strapped into their Hurricanes at instant readiness, were flown off and vectored towards the approaching planes.

  Our Hurricanes were manouevred into the ideal position: about a thousand feet above the enemy aircraft – which were identified as a pair of Ju 290s – and up sun. Mearns and Wallis then carried out a diving attack on the leading Junkers, which saw them coming, opened fire with tracer and tried to get down to sea level. (The idea of this was at sea level it couldn’t be attacked from below.) However, it had neither the manoeuvrability nor the defensive armament to escape.47

  Augustin continues:

  The convoy was located. While we were analyzing the screen, the rear gunner gave the alarm call: ‘Fighters behind us.’ And already the first tracer whizzed past – like a little snowball – over our left wing. The order was given ‘Fire at will’ and the aircraft nearly rolled over as it headed for the safety of the surface of the water. The rear gunner and the forward turret opened fire at full blast.