Osprey - Aircraft of the Aces 116 - Aces of Jagdgeschwader 3 «Udet».pdf

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OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES

Aces of

Jagdgeschwader

‘Udet’

John Weal

SERIES EDITOR: TONY HOLMES

OSPREY AIRCRAFT OF THE ACES 116

ACES OF

JAGDGESCHWADER

‘UDET’

John Weal

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

A SLOW START 6

CHAPTER TWO

BATTLE OF BRITAIN AND AFTER 13

CHAPTER THREE

BARBAROSSA

—

AN ABUNDANCE OF ACES 22

CHAPTER FOUR

MEDITERRANEAN INTERLUDE 32

CHAPTER FIVE

GROWING SOVIET RESISTANCE 36

CHAPTER SIX

DEFENCE OF THE REICH 59

CHAPTER SEVEN

NORMANDY BLOODBATH 68

CHAPTER EIGHT

RETREAT AND DEFEAT 72

APPENDICES 85

C O L O U R P L AT E S C O M M E N TA R Y 9 2

INDEX 95

CHAPTER ONE

A SLOW START

ne of the minor anomalies of the wartime German Luftwaffe was

the fact that its most famous dive-bomber unit,

Stukageschwader

2 ‘Immelmann’, was named after the man who was arguably

World War 1’s greatest fighter tactician, whereas it was a fighter unit that

bore the name of the man who is considered by many to be the founding

father of the Third Reich’s dive-bomber arm! The reasons behind this

apparent illogicality are of no relevance here. Suffice it simply to say that

the origins of the fighter unit in question,

Jagdgeschwader

3, date back

more than five years before the honour title ‘Udet’ was conferred upon it.

I./JG 232, one of four new

Jagdgruppen

to be activated on 1 April 1936,

was initially set up at Bernburg, some 140 kilometres to the southwest

of Berlin. In common with all the other fighter units brought into

being during the years leading up to the outbreak of World War 2, this

original I./JG 232 was to undergo a complex and bewildering succession

of redesignations. Within months it had been renumbered to become

I./JG 137, and as such it was later divided into two. Two of its

Staﬀeln

were used to establish the experimental I.(leichte

Jagd)/Lehrgeschwader

(I.(J)/LG 2 of the early war years). The remaining

Staﬀel

was then

strengthened to form the nucleus of a ‘new’ I./JG 137 during the latter

half of 1938.

By this time a second

Gruppe,

II./JG 137, had already been activated

at Zerbst, just 30 kilometres to the northeast of Bernburg. And on

1 November 1938 the two units were redesignated to become I. and

II./JG 231 respectively. They did not retain these identities for long,

however. In the final pre-war reshuffle of 1 May 1939, I./JG 231 was

incorporated into the new

Zerstörer

arm as I./ZG 2 (albeit still equipped

with single-engined Bf 109Ds), while II./JG 231 finally emerged as

I./JG 3 – the first (and as yet only)

Gruppe

Jagdgeschwader

During the two Gruppen’s six-month existence, a

Geschwaderstab

(HQ

Staff ) had been formed alongside I./JG 231 at Bernburg.

Stab

JG 231 was

commanded by Oberstleutnant Max Ibel, who remained

Kommodore

after the unit’s renumbering as JG 3.

On 26 August 1939, just six days prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland,

Oberstleutnant Ibel had transferred

his

Stab

JG 3 the 90 kilometres

eastwards from Bernburg to Brandis.

But JG 3 was not intended for

service in the coming campaign

against Poland. During the opening

month of World War 2 the role of

Ibel’s command (still comprising

just I./JG 3) was instead to provide

the aerial defence of the industrial

region of central Germany to the

immediate south of Berlin. In

the event, this area saw no daylight

The man in whose honour JG 3 was

to be named, Ernst Udet (centre),

is seen here in the mid-1930s

wearing the uniform of a

Flieger-

Vizekommodore

(Lieutenant-Colonel)

of the

Deutscher Luftsport-Verband

(German Air Sports Association),

complete with World War 1 medal

ribbons and with the

Pour la Mérite

around his neck

A S L O W S TA R T

Posing proudly in front of the pearl-

grey and green Bü 133

Jungmeister

(L2+08) that he flew as a member

of LG 2’s

Kunstflugstaffel

(Aerobatic

squadron), the young Josef

Heinzeller was one of a number of

LG 2 pilots who subsequently joined

JG 3 and rose to become aces

Ramrod-straight as he shakes hand

with his

Führer,

an equally young-

looking Günther Lützow – future

Geschwaderkommodore

of JG 3 – is

pictured here during a visit by Hitler

to the Werneuchen fighter school on

the outskirts of Berlin in the months

leading up to the outbreak of war

bomber incursions of any kind, either from the Polish Air Force in the east,

or from Britain and France to the west. By the end of September 1939

Stab

JG 3 had itself been split into two. Oberstleutnant Ibel took one section

to Münster-Handorf, where it became

Stab

JG 27, while Oberstleutnant

Carl Vieck – hitherto the

Gruppenkommandeur

of I./JG 2 ‘Richthofen’ –

led the other back to Zerbst as the new

Kommodore

Stab

JG 3.

Little more than a month later I./JG 3, which by now had joined

the

Stab

at Zerbst, also underwent a change of command. The veteran

Oberstleutnant Otto-Heinrich von Houwald, who had been

Kommandeur

of the

Gruppe

since its inception as II./JG 137 in the summer of 1938,

was appointed to a training post. His place at the head of I./JG 3 was

taken by 27-year-old Hauptmann Günther Lützow, an

ace of the recent Spanish Civil War.

In early January 1940 Hauptmann Lützow’s I./JG 3

was posted to the western front, where it was attached

Stab

JG 77. For the next four months the

Gruppe

occupied a succession of bases in the Rhineland region,

often deployed in individual

Staﬀel

strength on separate

fields some distance apart. This was the period of the

‘Phoney War’, or

Sitzkrieg,

a fact all too clearly reflected

in the unit’s as yet pristine war diary, which recorded

neither losses nor a single victory.

Meanwhile, back in the heart of the Reich, the

operational hiatus that had followed on from the defeat

of Poland was being put to good use as the size of the

Luftwaffe was rapidly increased. Among the many new

units formed during this time were II./JG 3, which was

activated under Hauptmann Erich von Selle alongside

the

Geschwaderstab

at Zerbst on 1 February 1940, and

Hauptmann Walter Kienitz’s III./JG 3, established at Jena,

near Weimar, exactly one month later. Not surprisingly

perhaps, neither of these two

Gruppen

achieved any

victories during what remained of the ‘Phoney War’,

although III./JG 3 did suffer the loss of one NCO pilot,

whose aircraft crashed in bad weather while on an

operational sortie northeast of the Ruhr on 18 April 1940.

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