Stuka Pilot

Our salvation depends on them! I have to pull my stick for all I am worth. Otherwise the “ball” pops back into the comer. I handle the aircraft gingerly as if she were a living thing. I coax her out loud and suddenly cannot help thinking of Old Shatterhand and his horse Rih. Scharnovski interrupts my thoughts.

“We have two holes in the wings—there are a couple of birch trees sticking out of them—we have also lost a large bit of one aileron and landing flap.”

I look out and perceive that I have climbed out of the lowest bank of cloud and am now flying above it. We are back in daylight! I see that Scharnovski is right. Two great holes in the wings on either side reaching to the main spar with small birch saplings sticking through them. The aileron and the landing flap are in the condition described. Now I begin to understand: the air is caught in the wings which explains the loss of speed; the difficulties in steering are also accounted for. How long will the valiant Ju. 87 be able to carry on? I reckon I must be about thirty miles behind the Russian front. Now, and not till now, do I remember my load of bombs. I jettison them, and this makes flying easier. We usually meet with enemy fighters on every sortie.

Today one of them would not have to shoot me down; a dirty look would be quite sufficient to do the trick. I cannot discover even one. At last I am across the front line and slowly approach our airfield.

I warn Scharnovski to bale out immediately. I give the order in case I find the aircraft no longer controllable. I reconstruct in my mind the recent miracle which has given me an extended lease of life: the storm blew up; after I had got the other instruments back to normal by constantly pulling the stick I must have been close to the ground at the very moment the aircraft recovered a horizontal position. At this speed I must have swept along an avenue of birch trees or between two single birches, and that was where I picked up the broken saplings. It was a stroke of uncanny luck that they tore holes exactly in the centre of the wings and did not catch the propeller, otherwise it would have become unbalanced and flown off in a matter of seconds. Still to maintain stability after such a jar and actually to bring me safely home is a thing no aircraft could possibly do except a Ju. 87.

The return flight takes much too long for my liking, but at last I see Stoltzy ahead of me. The tension relaxes sensibly and I stretch my shoulders again. There are some of our fighters at Stoltzy, and now it will not be long before we are back at our station. “Scharnovski, you are to bale out over the airfield.”

I have no idea what my machine looks like from the ground nor how the holes in the wings will affect its aerodynamic characteristics when landing. There must be no unnecessary damage now.

“I won’t. You’ll make it all right, sir,” he replies in an almost level voice. What can one answer to that?

The airfield is below us. I see it with new eyes; it has a more homelike appearance than usual. There my Ju can have a good rest; there are my comrades, the familiar faces. Somewhere down there hangs my tunic and in one of the pockets the last letter received from home. What was it my mother wrote? A chap ought to read his mother’s letters through more carefully!

The squadron has apparently been paraded for dispersal. Are they perhaps being briefed for another sortie? In that case we must hurry. Now they are all staring up at our aircraft and moving away. I get ready to land and in order to have a safety factor I come in at a pretty fair speed. After taxiing for a considerable distance I am safely back. Some of the chaps have run alongside us for the last hundred yards. I climb out of the aircraft; so does Scharnovski with perfect nonchalance. Now our colleagues cluster round us and pat us on the back. I hurriedly push my way through this welcoming committee and report to the skipper:

“Pilot Officer Rudel returning from ops. Special incident—contact with the ground in the target area—aircraft unserviceable.”

He shakes us by the hand; a smile on his face. Then with a shake of the head he walks away towards the squadron tent.

Of course we have to repeat the whole story to the others. They tell us they had just been paraded to hear the skipper deliver a short obituary speech. “Pilot Officer Rudel and his crew attempted the impossible. They tried to attack the set target by diving through the storm, and death has claimed them.” He was just filling his lungs to start a new sentence when the battered Ju. 87 appeared on the edge of the airfield. Then he turned even paler and quickly dismissed the parade.

Even now in the tent he flatly refuses to believe that I did not purposely dive into the storm instead of being plunged into pitch black darkness because I was flying so close to his aircraft when he suddenly banked round.

“I assure you, sir, it wasn’t intentional.”