Stuka Pilot

The second term finds us in the neighboring town of Werder, a holiday resort in the Havel lake district. At last we are taught to fly. Competent instructors are at pains to initiate us into the mysteries of aviation. We practice circuits and landings with Fit. Sgt. Dieselhorst. After about the sixtieth time I am able to undertake a solo flight, and this achievement makes me an average pupil of my class. In conjunction with our flying lessons the technical and military curriculum is continued, as well as an advanced course for a commission. Our flying training finishes at the end of this second term and we receive our flight authority. The third term, back at Wildpark, is no longer so diversified. Little stress is laid on flying; instead air tactics, ground tactics, defense methods and other special subjects figure more largely in our work. Meanwhile I am seconded for a short spell and sent to Giebelstadt near Würzburg, the lovely old city on the Main, where I am attached to a combat unit as officer cadet. Gradually the date of our passing-out examination draws near, and speculation is rife as to what unit and what branch of the service we shall eventually be posted to. Almost to a man we would like to be fighter pilots, but this is clearly impossible. There is a rumor going about that our whole class is to be assigned to Bomber Command. Promotion to the rank of officer senior cadet and posting to a definite formation follows for those who pass the difficult examination.

Shortly before leaving the Military School we are sent on a visit to an anti-aircraft gunnery school on the Baltic coast. Quite unexpectedly Goering arrives and addresses us. At the end of his speech he asks for dive bomber volunteers. He tells us he still requires a number of young officers for the newly-formed Stuka formations. It does not take me long to make up my mind. “You would like to become a fighter,” I argue, “but you will have to be a bomber; so you might as well volunteer for the Stukas and be done with it.”

In any case I do not fancy myself flying the heavy bomber aircraft. A little quick thinking and my name is entered on the list of Stuka candidates. A few days later we all get our postings. Almost the whole of the class is assigned—to Fighter Command! I am bitterly disappointed, but there is nothing to be done about it.

I am a Stuka pilot. And so I watch my comrades happily depart.

In June 1938 I arrive at Graz, in the picturesque province of Steiermark, to report to a Stuka formation as officer senior cadet. It is three months since German troops marched into Austria, and the population is enthusiastic. The squadron which is stationed outside the town in the village of Thalerhof has recently received the type 87 Junkers; the single-seater Henschel will no longer be used as a dive-bomber. Learning to dive at all angles up to ninety degrees, formation flying, aerial gunnery and bombing are the fundamentals of the new arm. We are soon familiar with it. It cannot be said that I am a rapid learner; furthermore the rest of the squadron have already passed all their tests when I join it. It takes a long time to ring the bell, too long to please my squadron leader. I catch on so slowly that he ceases to believe that it will ever ring at all.

^{Ju. 87 Stuka}

The fact that I spend my leisure hours in the mountains, or at sport, rather than in the officers’ mess, and that on the rare occasions when I put in an appearance there my only beverage is milk does not make my position any easier.

Meanwhile I have received my commission as pilot officer, and at Christmas 1938 the squadron is instructed to submit the name of an officer for special training in operational reconnaissance. Other squadrons all return a blank form; none of them is willing to release a man. It is, however, a splendid opportunity for the “1st” to be able at last to send the milk-drinker into the wilderness. Naturally I object; I want to stay with the Stukas. But my efforts to put a spoke in the wheels of the military machine are fruitless.

So in January 1939 I find myself on a course at the Reconnaissance Flying School at Hildesheim, and in the depths of despair. We are given instruction in the theory and practice of aerial photography, and it is whispered that at the end of the course we are to be posted to formations whose task it will be to fly special missions for operational air command. In reconnaissance aircraft the observer is also the skipper, and so we all become observers. Instead of piloting our aircraft we have now to sit still and trust ourselves to a pilot whom we naturally set down as a duffer, prophesying that he is certain to crash one day—with us. We learn aerial photography, taking vertical and oblique photographs, etc., here in the region of Hildesheim. The rest of the time is devoted to monotonous theory. At the end of the course we are assigned to our formations.

I am transferred to Distance Reconnaissance Squadron 2F 121 at Prenzlau.