Robert Forsyth (1)Besprekingen

The Junkers Ju 188 might be the classic "what if" aircraft of the German bomber effort of World War II, as instead of flirting with the pie-in-the-sky "Bomber B" project, the Luftwaffe might have had this aircraft in service six months sooner when it might have made a difference. Or just bought enough time to allow Berlin the honor of receiving the first atomic bombing; some differences have no significance.

Be that as it may, Robert Forsyth probably can't write a bad book about German warplanes, and he ably leads one through the roundabout effort that saw the Ju 88B get redesignated as the Ju 188, and its use as a bomber, a strategic recon asset, a maritime strike machine, and its service as a transport for intelligence operatives. Forsyth even manages to squeeze in some astute observations about the Ju 388, an effort to stretch the basic design a little bit further in performance, but which turned out to be a stretch too far.

softback

So, I've been looking forward to reading this booklet for awhile, as the Arado Blitz has always had a particular fascination for me, even as compared to the Me 262. Apart from the independent recon units, the focus of this study is on KG 76, and the efforts of the assigned officers and men to create a viable fighting unit as the Nazi state crumbled. All things considered they did very well indeed, in the face of unrelenting Allied air pressure, the shortages, and the slipshod construction standards of the late-war German aircraft industry. Highly recommended.

Considering the expense of the author's hardcover study of this machine from 2015, this (and hopefully a follow-on work covering Operation "Mercury" forward) is going to be the study that most enthusiasts wind up with. To be honest, they'll probably be satisfied with this as the origins of the Ju 52 are covered, along with service in the Spanish Civil War and most of Germany's major operations of the glory days of the "Blitzkrieg." Perhaps the most striking thing is how high the attrition rate seemed to be, even in the early stages of the war when the Luftwaffe had dependable air superiority; though the success of the Spanish Republic's Soviet-provided fighters when all the "Condor Legion" had to rely on was the Heinkel He 51 was an early warning. The Germans never kidded themselves that the Junkers was a great bomber.

A typically good work from Forsyth, who is one of our current best historians of German military aviation, in which a scratch force of ad hoc elements gets built into an elite unit on the bleeding edge of combat over Germany itself. If you've been reading this series before you know what you're going to be getting.

German U-boats were the scourge of Allied merchant and military shipping in the Atlantic during World War II, threatening to isolate and then starve the UK out of the war. As Germany's war against the Allied convoys intensified in late 1943, German Admiral Karl Dönitz called upon the Luftwaffe to provide a long-range spotting and shadowing unit to act as 'eyes' for his U-boats. Equipped with big, four-engined Junkers Ju 290s fitted out with advanced search radar and other maritime 'ELINT' (electronic intelligence) devices, Fernaufklärungsgruppe (FAGr) 5 'Atlantic' undertook a distant, isolated campaign far out into the Atlantic and thousands of miles away from its home base in western France. The information generated and reported back to Dönitz's headquarters was vital to the efforts of the U-boats, and FAGr 5's 'shadowing' missions were assigned priority in terms of skilled crews, supplies and equipment.

This book tells for the first time the fascinating story of the formation and operations of FAGr 5 'Atlantik', drawing on never-before-published historical records of the unit that accounted for the reporting and destruction of thousands of tons of Allied shipping.

Another read from my personal Great Reserve Army of Books, I'm inclined to agree with the previous reviewer that the authors are probably overly impressed with this machine, as it really just represents another milepost on the Third Reich's final death march. To put it another way, an aircraft that is only suitable for a very experienced pilot (one British tester suggested about 2500 hours) is not a military solution. Still, it's technological misadventures such as the He 162 that help to maintain the fascination people have with Hitler's disastrous regime.

Osprey are starting to repeat themselves in an effort to drag their money-spinning series out with another Luftwaffe subject - JG 1 aces includes all those aces already covered in ' Fw 190 aces ', ' Fw 190 aces in the defense of the Reich', 'Viermot aces' etc etc . However they have ditched writer Weal and his dated artwork so this volume is absolutely worth getting for Jim Laurier's superb profile views

Yet another what-if German aircraft, with the distinction that this one actually made some test flights as opposed to remaining a set of paper drawings. Author Robert Forsyth and collaborator Eddie Creek have written dozens of aircraft books between them, and are apparently expert at extracting documents and photographs from musty government archives; the book has all sorts of pictures of the Me 264 under construction, on the ground, and in flight that I haven’t seen elsewhere.


I suppose the subtitle – “The Luftwaffe’s Lost Transatlantic Bomber” – makes me a little uncomfortable; it carries, perhaps, the subtle implication that if the Luftwaffe hadn’t been careless they wouldn’t have lost their bomber and thus would have been able to pulverize Manhattan. I keep buying and reading these things, though, so they can’t be making me that uncomfortable.


Despite the airplane porn, the most interesting part may be the political interactions between the miscellaneous German agencies concerned with specifying, ordering, designing, producing and flying aircraft. It never ceases to amaze me that an entity as internally screwed up as the Third Reich did as well as they did. Reichsluftfahrtministerium secretary Erhard Milch hated Willy Messerschmidt, Hitler changed his mind about what sort of airplanes he wanted about every 15 minutes, and Göring seems to have prided himself on how uncooperative he could be with the rest of the Wehrmacht.


Initial chapters provide a background on earlier German attempts to build long-range bombers – the Ju89 and Do19 – but these were abandoned (Göring, despite numerous other flaws, was not without intelligence and realized German simply couldn’t afford the infrastructure for a strategic bomber program. In that regard, it’s interesting that every major belligerent in WWII eventually did build four-engine heavy bombers, but only the US and UK were able to build strategic bomber forces). The book notes that the German aircraft industry was running at maximum capacity, and while it was perfectly capable of producing a prototype Me264, regular production – even of 20 to 30 aircraft – was impossible; there was just no German manufacturer, Messerschmidt or otherwise, that had the capability.


The Luftwaffe eventually did ask for a long-range aircraft – again, not quite being able to decide if it was going to be used for maritime reconnaissance or bombing New York - and Messerschmidt obligingly provided the Me264 (which apparently had been lurking around as an unfunded design project for a while). The product was an attractive aircraft, which got favorable reviews from test pilots, but which would not have been able to fly from Brest to New York City and back despite initial promises.

(There’s something of a mystery concerning Messerschmidt’s range projections. This book, and the online articles I’ve glanced at, gives the maximum range for the Me264 as between 11000 and 15000 kilometers, depending on bomb load. A Me264 was roughly the same size as a B-29 (I can’t say these are “definitive” numbers, because of the many variants of both aircraft, but they’re probably reasonable):

Length: Me264 20.55m; B-29 30.18m

Wingspan: Me264 43.1m, B-29 43.06m

Wing area: Me264 125m**2, B-29 161.3m**2

All-up takeoff weight: Me264 50000kg, B-29 60560kg

Fuel load: Me264 19721kg, B-29 25954kg (assuming 2.75 kg/gallon)

Yet the combat range figures Messerschmidt gave the RLM were between two and three times that of a B-29 (5230km). German engines, regardless of which ones were used, can’t have been that much more efficient than American ones. I suspect Willy was a little overenthusiastic. One important difference was the Me264 was not pressurized, which would have reduced its range compared to a B-29).


The superficial resemblance between a B-29 and an Me264 possibly misled some aviation enthusiasts ; there’s also a similarity between the cockpits on an Me264, a B-29, and the Millenium Falcon (presumably due to the Star Wars modelers having a B-29 kit handy) but neither a Me264 or a B-29 could make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.


While the Me264 was under construction, the Luftwaffe and Messerschmidt began playing musical chairs with specifications and designs. The Luftwaffe, at least, kept its vacillation between two possibilities – an Amerika bomber and an long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft. Messerschmidt proposed (and did enough design work to provide drawings and specifications):


* Four of just about every piston engine in the Luftwaffe inventory.

* Six of the same (this version probably could have reached the US East Coast from western France, assuming there was a long enough runway available)

* two turboprops and two turbojets (the turboprops were supposed to be steam turbines, running on a 65:35 mixture of powdered coal and gasoline).

* four piston engines in paired nacelles (one tractor and one pusher in each) and two turbojets in the wing roots.

* four pusher piston engines and two turbojets in the wing roots.


That’s just the power plant variants; the others were:


* an extended wing version.

* two different heavy bomber versions, sacrificing range for bomb load

* two different reconnaissance versions, sacrificing bomb load for range

* a courier aircraft to provide regular service to Japan

* a troop transport designed to carry twenty paratroopers. (The designers didn’t suggest what the utility of dropping 20 paratroops several thousand miles from their start point would be).

* a hybrid with the He277, using the wings of an Me264 on a He277 airframe


The Luftwaffe was particularly concerned about the takeoff weight and runway length required by the Me264. The prototype went into the air with single-tire main gear; it was recognized that a loaded example wouldn’t be able to do this and it was proposed to use a additionally, jettisonable wheel or pair of wheels. The six-engine version was to have an additional set of landing gear (i.e., two on each wing). The takeoff run was expected to be more than 2 kilometers when loaded, and various proposals were suggested to reduce that – towing the aircraft into the air with another Me264 or using rocket assist units.


Somehow a single aircraft managed to get built from this hodgepodge; by all accounts it was a fairly good airplane – at least the test pilots liked it. No weapons – offensive or defensive – were ever installed, and of the 52 test flights the longest was 2 ½ hours. The aircraft was totaled by B-17 raid on July 18, 1944.


The book ends with the obligatory “what-if-the-Nazis-got-The-Bomb” chapter that appears in any WWII speculative book. Nothing new.


All in all, the conclusion is more or less the same as other books that discussed Luftwaffe attacks on the US, Luftwaffe over America and Target:America): using existing aircraft (admittedly, single existing aircraft) the Germans could have cobbled together a mission (requiring mid-air refueling or ditching the aircraft in the ocean) that could have dropped a few bombs on the American east coast. Oddly, none of the authors speculate at any length over what the utility of such an attack would be, other than saying “the US would have been forced to withdraw air defense assets from Europe”. That’s very likely true, but it probably wouldn’t have lengthened the war in Europe by any significant amount.


Recommended if you like cool pictures of rare and/or hypothetical Nazi aircraft, and/or details of interagency rivalries in the Third Reich.

Sometimes I like reading about 'smaller units' in contrary to the broader perspective. It reminds me that it was real humans who fought, died or survived

This account is very specific in time, place and gallery of characters.

A good read, recommendable indeed

Sometimes it's great to 'tech-nerd' it a bit. This book is one of the better I have a read. Wonder if the Me 264 really could have made to the east coast of the USA and back? We'll never know

last Osprey Luftwaffe aces title ? ...probably yes, since much of the content of LUFTWAFFE VIERMOT ACES 1942-45 has been covered in detail in previous Osprey titles. That said there is some interesting new material for Osprey Aces fans here. This is the first Osprey Aces book to include details of less well known units such as JG 4 and the ZG heavy fighter Gruppen. Formed in 1942 to defend the petroleum fields of the Reich's Rumanian ally, JG 4 saw its first major combat action over the refineries of Ploesti during Operation Tidal Wave on 1 August 1943 - the cover illustration depicts 28-victory JG 4 ace Fw. Albert Palm in his `Yellow 6' downing a 44th BG B-24 during Tidal Wave on 1 August 1943. Refineries and oil were to take on a vital importance given the Reich's ever increasing fuel requirements the longer the conflict went on.

Robert Forsyth's well-written text reveals - perhaps surprisingly for a US readership - that the first Allied four-engine bomber raids mounted over Europe were the RAF's Stirling and Halifax bombers sent to attack Kriegsmarine battleships in the ports of Brittany, France, as early as July 1941 (see also Osprey Elite 'JG 2'). Although the first USAAF bomber missions, launched in mid-August 1942, were tentative affairs, the Luftwaffe would soon face the challenge of going into combat against ever-increasing numbers of heavily-armed B-17s and B-24s. In response to this growing threat, the Luftwaffe formed new fighter units and brought back battle-hardened units from other fronts to protect Germany's western borders - III./JG 3 was just one such Gruppe. Equipped with the Bf 109 G-6 mounting underwing cannon and led by Kommandeur Hauptmann Walter Dahl, III./JG 3 arrived from Russia and settled in at Munster on the western German border. Virtually their first action following their return to Germany after two years in Russia occurred on 17 August 1943 - the combined Schweinfurt Regensburg mission, the famous raid on the ball-bearing and Messerschmitt production plants. (see also Osprey 'Bf 109 aces of the Western Front') In total some 370 bombers set out on this first major USAAF daylight raid on Germany. The result was a disaster for the Americans - escorted only as far as the German border by P-47 Thunderbolts and RAF Spitfires, the Jagdgruppen launched wave after wave of attacks - some 60 B-17 fortresses were shot down, only some 135 managing to return to friendly territory undamaged ! ( As Regensburg was only 40 miles from the Czech border the 4th Bombardment Wing flew on to bases in North Africa ). Yet while the raid resulted in heavy losses for the fledging 8th Air Force bomber fleet, Schweinfurt-Regensburg proved to be an early high water mark in the Defence of the Reich. Aside from hastening the introduction of long-range US escort fighters, the Schweinfurt raid forced the German defenders to recognise their shortcomings in equipment and tactics. The American four engine bombers - Viermots in German jargon - operated close to the limits of the high altitude performance of the Bf 109 and Fw 190 fighters, and with their 40 metre wingspans the B-17s and B-24s were tough opponents, filling the Luftwaffe fighter's gun sights while they were still some way out of range and putting up a powerful defensive crossfire when in their combat 'boxes'. The favoured tactic of the German fighters was the head-on pass, yet with combined closing speeds of nearly 700 mph the conventional frontal attack was fraught with risk and required above average piloting skills. A firing pass from the rear was even riskier, leaving the attacking fighter exposed to the bomber boxes defensive fire power for a longer period.

The defenders tested any number of expedients as they sought ways of knocking down significant numbers of bombers in order to bring a halt to the offensive as detailed in this account. In August 1943 the WGr 21 was first introduced. This 21cm diameter air-to-air rocket was equipped with a time fuse and fired into the bomber formations to break up flying cohesion and the integrity of the 'boxes', thus exposing individual B-17s to fighter attack. The primary units toting these sorts of weapons were the heavy fighter or 'destroyer' Gruppen. Forsyth devotes a chapter to the heavy fighters of ZG 1, 26 and 76 including mini-bios of ZG aces such as Egon Albrecht and Peter Jenne -both of whom later converted onto single-seat fighters and were promptly KIA. Yet while German fighter armament was being upgraded to provide the punch to knock down the bombers, the impact on manoeuvrability meant that the attacking 109s, 190s, Bf 110s and Me 410s, now laden with heavy weapons, were increasingly to become prey for high performance and agile USAAF escort fighters. The Luftwaffe gradually lost air superiority over its own territory. Forsyth's text goes on to deal with other innovations introduced in German air defence - the Sturmgruppen (see also Osprey Elite 'The Sturmgruppen', 'Fw 190 aces of the Western Front'), units which adopted ramming as a combat tactic, and the first Luftwaffe jet units (see also this author's Osprey Elite 'JG 7' and 'JV 44').

During the summer and autumn of 1944 the American strategic daylight bombing offensive against the Reich was at its height. The air battles waged in the skies of Germany over this three-month period were some of the largest and most savage in the history of aerial warfare. By war's end, over 110 Luftwaffe pilots had claimed 10 or more Viermot kills. One Geschwader in particular was at the forefront of Reichs defence - JG 300. If there is to be another Luftwaffe aces title, then the publishers could certainly look at JG 300. For the first time in the Osprey Aces series aces, JG 300 aces such as Ernst Hirschfeld, Peter Jenne and Konrad Bauer are all covered in this volume, which is a fitting tribute to these less-well known Luftwaffe aces. And while this volume must be the last of Osprey's Luftwaffe aces titles, it loses two 'stars' for coverage of events already well detailed in other recent Osprey volumes. However, I would still rate this book as 'worth a purchase' for Luftwaffe 'fans' - the superlative and highly realistic profile artwork by Jim Laurier, including for the first time both port and starboard side views of the same aircraft- is worth the price of admission alone!½

.. My discounted copy of this new 'Duel' title arrived today - the Osprey 'preview' image from this volume depicting JG 300 pilots Loos & Dahl boring in on the 303rd BG over Bitburg, 15 Aug 44 has been posted on a number of sites and my 11-year old thinks its pretty decent - I have to agree it beats the usual dreary battle scene 'painting' in these titles even if the Fw 190's are too close together and the rear B-17 gunner wouldn't be firing a stream of tracer. Whether I can actually persuade my son to read any of the text will be another matter altogether. There seems to be rather more words here than in previous 'Duel' titles starting with a chronology that curiously ends on 2 December 1944. The themes of FW 190 as 'bomber killer' over Germany are explored but this is no chronological account - that would be to repeat the Elite title. Elsewhere the B-17 is given some nice graphic artwork illustrating the various fighting compartments and there are some personal accounts of coming under fire from German fighters. Bizarrely the text goes on to discuss the Sonderkommando Elbe ramming Bf 109s of April 1945. There is no detail at all on the huge bomber battles that took place over Germany during late December 1944 and early January 1945.

Some of the text I've read seems curiously to focus on Walther Dahl of JG 300 - there are several pictures of him and a full page profile. While acknowledging that his autobiography was 'colourful' the book repeats all the old chestnuts regarding his supposed 128 victories and his huge accumulation of bomber kills - for which the authors of the JG 300 history found little or no evidence of course.

..There is no chronological account of the Fw 190 as 'bomber killer' just the timeline ending on 2 December as already mentioned. That has to be a typo, and should read 24 December, which was the date of IV.(Sturm)/JG3's last big success in the West. Otherwise the book itself is a very selective look at various aspects of the daylight bombing campaign focusing on training, the machines, the men. Nothing to do with the author I doubt, but this is a title assembled to fit a tightly outlined format and as such doesn't work very well at all for me.

The story of the so-called Volksjäger (the 'People's Fighter') project is told here in perhaps the most comprehensive work yet to appear on the type in English. The He 162 was a last throw of the dice by the Nazi leadership in mid-to-late 1944. Powered by a BMW turbojet, the He 162 achieved notoriety by going from drawing board to prototype flight in just three months, often at considerable human cost. Robert Forsyth and Eddie J. Creek offer a unique insight into the workings of the Nazi production system in the late-war period through many rare photographs, facsimile documents, detailed text and colour artworks. But while development and deployment of the He 162 were compressed into the most restricted time frame possible, a considerable achievement, there were the almost inevitable consequences. No combat aircraft that I can think of has been pressed into service so rapidly with an almost total lack of developmental testing to wring out the bugs. And there were plenty of those. Flight testing then was to be carried out at unit level and this book exploits author Erik Mombeeck's considerable research into the history of the only fighter unit to have flown the type in combat Jagdgeschwader 1. The discussion surrounding the He 162's supposed combat successes also relies heavily on research carried by Rick Chapman in 1989 and published in Jet & Prop magazine but I have to say that I think the authors conclusions, based on pilot reports and a translation of some German text is erroneous.
Of particular interest though is a detailed photographic overview of the famous JG 1 line-up at Leck, the text documenting the mix of resignation and relief felt by the men of the last Luftwaffe Jagdgeschwader who had managed to fall back to Schleswig Holstein and who were able to surrender to the British. Much of this passage is drawn from my own translation of Eric Mombeek's forthcoming history of JG 4 (Vol II), e.g. this extract from the JG 4 War diary for Sunday 06 May 1945;

“Our aircraft, vehicles and other equipment is lined up as if for one last parade. The sight is an impressive one and will certainly give the British food for thought. We are proud to show off more than one hundred of our aircraft like this – from the ultra -modern Me262 and He162 that have flown only limited numbers of combat sorties – to the Bf109 and Fw190 fighters that have returned victories in thousands of successful air battles. All will pass into enemy hands. This afternoon several light tanks and trucks bring RAF ground forces onto the airfield. Oberst Nordmann then the Kommodore and Kommandeure have to go before the Colonel commanding the RAF forces. To our great surprise they receive a handshake by way of greeting! However we are airmen together – we remain sceptical as to what may follow the courtesies that our extended to us: what will happen when the other occupation forces arrive? The first orders are to draw up an inventory of all our matériel. All weapons must be handed in apart from the officers side-arms.”

Was the type a 'dazzling success' as previous authors (Ethell, Price) have suggested. Hardly.. In my view the authors go too far here in assessing the He 162 as '"an unprecedented aeronautical achievement". Quoted in French aviation magazine 'Le Fana' in 1997, French He162 test pilot Raphael Lombaert (briefly quoted in the Classic book) states that the He162 was 'anything but a success' & only 'dazzled' in the brevity of the conception process. The a/c itself as depicted by Lombaert was "pedestrian and dangerous". This was not a machine of sparkling performance by any stretch of the imagination. The most basic of fighter manoeuvres could in the He162 become "terribly vicious". Although not discussed in the Classic book, French He162s were never flown post-war for longer than 15 minutes due to concerns over the rate of fuel consumption and the horrendous noise from the jet engine right next to the pilot's head! Many died in crashes directly resulting from short-comings in the design. We can perhaps only agree with Lombaert when he states "whenever I see this a/c now preserved in museums I cannot help but spare a thought for all those that fell victim to this machine, truly a tool of desperation ..".

An essential reference work for all students of Luftwaffe World War II airpower.