But the moment the order to scramble was broadcast over the field’s loudspeakers and the ground crews began to remove the camouflage netting from the machines, push them from their dispersal points hidden under the trees and help me to strap myself into my seat, all other thoughts were forgotten and it was time to concentrate solely on the coming mission. Once in the air every pilot’s full attention was focussed on the business in hand; keeping in contact with his Rotte or Schwarm leader and constantly quartering the sky for the first signs of the reported ‘Indianer’ or ‘dicke Autos’–‘large cars’; multi-engined bombers. If we did make contact with the enemy, we were almost invariably vastly outnumbered. We suffered the inevitable consequences and next morning another one or two familiar faces would be missing from the bus taking us out to the field.

The mission of 25 May was typical. We were scrambled to engage a formation of enemy bombers reported to be approaching our area. After a long climb we sighted them. In all truth, it would have been hard to miss them: a force of about 120 American B-24 Liberators, flying in four boxes of some thirty bombers each, escorted by at least fifty Lockheed P-38 Lightnings. In all, the enemy must have numbered well over 150. We were just five!

The Staffelkapitän was leading. I was tucked in on his left, with my Katschmarek alongside me (by this time I had been elevated to the position of a Rotte leader), while the other pair, the experienced Unteroffizier Paul Herbing and tyro Fähnrich Schiller, were a little way behind us acting as Holzaugen–literally ‘wooden eyes’ or lookouts. Their job was to guard our tails.

Leutnant Walterscheid manoeuvred us into an attacking position some way ahead, and off to one side of the bombers. In a long curving pass against the outer box of Liberators we were able to claim a ‘Herausschuss’. This was a term peculiar to antibomber operations. Meaning a ‘shooting out’, it was used to describe a bomber damaged so severely that it was forced to drop out of formation. In the Luftwaffe’s rather complicated points scoring system (used to determine the conferral of awards), a Herausschuss rated just below the total destruction of a bomber. For once it had left the safety of its combat box, a damaged bomber limping along on its own was regarded as a relatively easy target. And any pilot who subsequently chanced upon such a lone straggler and finally shot it down received fewer points than the original Herausschuss claimant.

After completing our single high-speed firing run it was time to make ourselves scarce. But to our amazement we spotted a small group of the escorting Lightnings that had apparently, and inexplicably, failed to notice that their charges were under attack. They were stooging along seemingly oblivious to all around them. It was a rare opportunity and one too good to miss. With the speed built up during our diving pass on the bombers, we were able to curve in behind the unsuspecting P38s. Banking hard to the left, the Staffelkapitän claimed the two enemy fighters flying on the extreme right, while I put a burst of cannon fire into a third.

Its pilot immediately baled out and tumbled past beneath my wings like a badly wrapped parcel. I can only hope that he delayed opening his ’chute, for all this had taken place at an altitude of about 6,500 metres, and a slow descent by parachute from that height could well prove fatal, either from suffocation in the thin air or by freezing to death. The fourth Lightning had dived away. But we didn’t chase after him as our Holzaugen were reporting the rapid approach of another gaggle of enemy fighters.

Instead, we stood our machines on their noses, rammed the throttles forward and in an instant had 950 km/h on the clock. Glancing back over my shoulder to make sure that all was well, I was horrified to see that Schiller, one of our two Holzaugen, had decided to stay upstairs and battle it out with four of the newly arrived Lightnings. But his experience didn’t match his foolhardy courage, and two of the P-38s were already sliding unnoticed on to his tail.

I wrenched my Focke-Wulf out of its dive, intending to go to his aid. A zoom climb, plus a generous amount of boost, got me up above the Lightnings in very short order. But it was already too late. Even as I turned in towards the enemy pair, I knew that I would never get into position to open fire on them in time. In desperation I yelled at Schiller over the R/T: “Verreisen sie, verreisen sie!”–“Start travelling, start travelling!”–but he gave no indication of having heard me.

A second or two later I had another quartet of Lightnings sniffing at my own tail. With tracers flying past my ears, it was high time I took my own advice. I pushed the stick fully forward and went ‘travelling’ again in another almost vertical dive. With the needle jammed against the 950, I was relieved to find that none of the Lightnings had been able to follow me down. At 2,000 metres I attempted to pull out, but the stick was rock solid. Standing on the rudder pedals, I heaved on it with both hands, but it refused to budge. As a last resort I tried the tailplane trim switch. Thanks to the Focke-Wulf’s electrical system, all it took was a flick of my little finger (in an Me 109 recovery from a dive like this would have been impossible).

The machine responded instantly, and with such brute strength and agility that I was pressed down into my seat with a g force the like of which I had never before experienced in my whole life. I couldn’t even lift my finger from the trim switch. A dark veil, razored by flashes of lightning, descended before my eyes. But I remained semi-conscious throughout and was dimly aware of the aircraft flattening out. I regained full vision after another second or so to find myself about 1,000 metres off the ground, flying straight and level, and with the clock still hovering on the 800 mark.

A few hours after landing back at base we received news that our two Holzaugen had both been found dead in the wreckage of their machines. The loss of one had been particularly needless and could so easily have been avoided. How the other met his end we never did find out. There had been no witnesses.

There was a postscript to the action, however. My shouted warning to Schiller over the R/T had of course been heard over the Geschwader ops room speakers. As a result the Geschwaderkom modore, Oberstleutnant Kurt Bühligen–after talking the matter over with my Gruppenkommandeur, Major Erich Hohagen–decided to have me report in person at wing HQ to describe the events in full. For without knowing the true circumstances, my orders to Schiller to ‘start travelling’ could well have been construed as inciting a subordinate to display cowardice in the face of the enemy. But when I explained exactly what had taken place, I was completely exonerated.

This was the only occasion that I was to come into close contact with Oberstleutnant Bühligen. Although he had been appointed Geschwaderkommodore just a few days beforehand, he had served with JG 2 since the Battle of Britain; achieving his first victory as an Unteroffizier on 4 September 1940. He had since taken his total to very nearly a century, all scored against the Western allies, and was now wearing the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. My lasting impression of him was that he was no hidebound military martinet, but someone who was both approachable and prepared to listen to both sides of an argument before forming a judgement.

My Gruppenkommandeur, incidentally, had also opened his score over southern England in the summer of 1940 (when a member of JG 51). Major Erich Hohagen struck me as being very correct, but always ready to stand up for those serving under him. His pet hate, I was told, was ‘bumph’–he had an aversion to paperwork of any kind.

In addition to our operations over France, we were sometimes also called upon to participate in so-called ‘Defence of the Reich’ missions. On these occasions we would take off at first light and deploy to Trier, just over the German border. Here we were held at readiness until the enemy’s intentions became clear, awaiting the order to scramble if the bomber stream was reported to be heading towards our region of southwest Germany. Now and again we would also land at Trier at the end of such missions in order to refuel before heading back to France. Once when we were just about to touch down at Trier, it was about 14.00hrs on a scorching hot May afternoon and our cockpits were like ovens, I spotted an enticingly blue body of water shimmering in the sun very close to the airfield.

I drew this pool to my Katschmarek’s attention, indicating that we should park our machines on the perimeter of the field as close to it as possible and grab the chance for a refreshing swim. This we did, climbing first out of our crates, and then out of our sweat-soaked flying gear, before rushing across and plunging stark naked into the water. We were snorting and splashing about like a pair of happy porpoises when we heard an angry yell, ‘what the devil did we think we were playing at, this was a reservoir supplying drinking water to the townspeople of Trier!’ We obeyed the order to clear off at once. The quick dip had been wonderfully invigorating, all the same–and I never did hear of any epidemic of plague or pestilence breaking out among the good folk of Trier.

Our Defence of the Reich operations weren’t crowned with much success. But one of them did end in my having to make another emergency landing. It was early morning and four of us were about twenty minutes into the flight to Trier. We were cruising along at a height of some 400 metres, following the northern bank of the River Aisne, when my engine emitted a loud bang and the RPM needle suddenly started to unwind. As was my custom, I had been scanning the terrain en route, keeping an eye open for possible forced-landing sites–after all, one could never be too sure. But they seemed to be few and far between in this region; in fact, it would be more accurate to say that there weren’t any at all.

This stretch of the Aisne reminded me very much of the valley of the Moselle: deep, narrow and winding. Thick forests stretched away on either side, while crammed into the floor of the valley alongside the river itself were roads, railway tracks, buildings and all sorts of other awkward items, none of which was particularly conducive to a successful forced landing. Then I remembered a few minutes earlier seeing a small green clearing cut back into the forest from the lip of the gorge. I carefully reversed course and pushed the throttle fully forward to extract the last ounce of power out of the failing engine. I soon caught sight of the clearing again and executed a gentle turn to come in from across the river.

I was on my final approach for a wheels-up landing when the engine finally died altogether, but fortunately it was at the point where I was about to chop the throttle anyway. Now fully committed, I was horrified to discover that the clearing wasn’t a clearing at all, but a fully mature orchard. But I had run out of options. I steered the Focke-Wulf down straight into the middle of the fruit trees. At least they would make for a softer landing than the thick trunks of the trees in the high forest that otherwise surrounded me on all sides. Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone making his last journey to the executioner’s block.

The armoured nose of my machine smashed into the luxuriant crowns of the fruit trees, sending leaves and branches flying in all directions. My left wing sliced a tree neatly in two. Then the right wing did the same, and then the left again. I progressed through the orchard, gradually sinking lower and leaving a lengthening trail of devastation in my wake, before emerging at the far end, only a couple of metres off the ground, and slamming down onto a small patch of grass separating what a moment ago had been the orderly rows of fruit trees from the start of the forest proper.

The jolt of the landing sprained my back slightly, but otherwise I was unhurt. My sturdy 190 had protected me well and I didn’t have a scratch on me. But the machine itself was a total write-off. The fuselage was buckled and the surfaces of both wings displayed the kind of curves that any smart young lady of the time would have died for.

When smoke began to pour from the engine cowling I hopped quickly out, fearing the whole thing might explode at any moment. Luckily there was a flak observation tower nearby. From their eyrie the crew had enjoyed a bird’s eye view as I carved my spectacular swathe of destruction through the orchard. They were soon on the scene. After helping me back to the tower, they rang the Staffel and looked after me royally until a car came to pick me up. Naturally, the matter didn’t rest there. The reason for my forced landing had to be established. Subsequent investigation showed that the engine’s rear mounting ring had broken, either as a result of poor materials or from metal fatigue, and so once again I was off the hook.

Despite–or perhaps because of–the burdens of war, we rarely passed up an opportunity to ‘hang one on’. Whenever Saint Peter was kind enough to send down some nice thick clouds in the afternoon, and our ‘weather frog’, or meteorologist, predicted more of the same for the following day, our thoughts naturally turned to the best way of filling the unexpected free time. If neither we nor the Tommys were going to have to haul our backsides into the air early the next morning, it meant that the evening ahead was ours. Thus it came about that another of our many aces, Leutnant Siegfried Lemke, the Kapitän of 1. Staffel–who, with nearly forty victories to his credit, was already in line for the Knight’s Cross–decided to devote one such evening to a belated birthday celebration. He generously invited four or five of us to join him in the festivities. These, however, were not to be held in the mess bar, our everyday watering hole. Thanks to the intervention of the aforementioned Saint Peter, Lemke had a much more exclusive venue in mind.

Somehow he had obtained permission to make use of the unit’s ‘Holzgaser’, a converted civilian vehicle driven by a wood-burning contraption–technically known as a gasifier, I believe–mounted at the rear. It was in this unlikely conveyance that we duly set forth on the eighty-kilometre journey to Paris; more specifically, to one of the French capital’s then hottest night spots–‘Les Doges’ in the Rue des Italiens. It was a birthday party to remember. When the place started to empty towards midnight, we hired the three-man musical combo to stay on until four in the morning to play just for our enjoyment alone.

There was very nearly a disaster during the trip back to base in the cold light of dawn. Not because of the state we were in, which was admittedly decidedly merry, but due to a sudden encounter with a tractor being driven by a stouthearted son of the French soil, who clearly regarded the whole width of the road as his personal and rightful domain. It was thanks entirely to the incredibly fast reactions of our birthday boy at the wheel that we lived to fight another day…and what a day it would prove to be.