On November 9^th, 2003, members of IPMS London had the privilege of hearing reminiscences from three participants in the Second World War, each of whom had very different perspectives.  Hermann Weber (left in the photo above) served in the Luftwaffe's JG 4 for 2 ½ years, flying Bf-109s from Romania, Italy, Belgium, and Germany.  Hermann's wife Hildegard (centre) worked as an engineer with the Blohm und Voss company in Hamburg.  Finally, Charlie Fox (right) flew Spitfires with 412 Squadron RCAF over western Europe.

Hermann Weber was a Luftwaffe pilot from 1941 to 1945, ending the war as Gruppen technical officer for I/JG4.  Although he flew many types of aircraft during the war, almost all of his combat time was in Bf-109s (F, G, and K models).  His training, amazingly enough, was in North American NA-64s (Yales to us Commonwealth types) that had been captured in France.  Among Hermann's classmates was Hans-Joachim Marseille, whom Hermann charitably describes as having "a lack of recognition" of rules (perhaps due to his father being a high-ranking officer) and a tendency to party late and sleep in as he felt fit.  Among the other training aircraft that Hermann flew were FW-44s, Ju-86s (for instrument training), and Bf-110s.  In fact, he was sent out in a Bf-110 once in 1942 to (unsuccessfully) intercept a Mosquito.  Among the most unusual types that Hermann flew during this period was the Bf-109T variant, intended for shipboard service aboard the carrier Graf Zeppelin.

In 1943, Hermann was sent to Romania to help defend the Ploesti oilfields.  During Operation Tidal Wave, the low-level B-24 raid, Hermann was in the fighter control centre, helping to coordinate the fighter response to the raid.  Throughout the war, Hermann had his own personal aircraft.  When he commanded 4./JG4, his plane was Yellow 5, a Bf-109G-6 named "Whisky."  Upon leaving Romania, Hermann gave that plane to the Romanians, and got a reconnaissance version for his personal plane.  This was a much different aircraft from any other he flew.  First off, it had a rear view mirror, which none of his other planes were ever equipped with.  Second, the plane was built to a much higher level than standard fighters.  All of the rivets had been filled and sanded, and the plane had outer gear doors (like the Bf-109K-4) which sealed the wheel wells very well.  This gave his plane much better performance and endurance than the other aircraft in his unit, so he was always the last man in the formation to land.

Hermann's stories had a refreshing honesty and self-deprecating quality.  For instance, he remembered chopping the tail off of another Bf-109 during a scramble, and also recalled the one and only time that he flew a combat mission with a hangover (against P-40s over Italy).  After almost shooting down a German aircraft due to blurred vision, Hermann decided that combat and alcohol didn't mix!

Some of Hermann's stories also made life on the ground seem harrowing.  In Italy, Hermann recalled that every day they had to fight their way through partisans from the villa that the squadron was billeted in to the airfield, and that a machine gun was mounted on their truck for that purpose.  While based at Antwerp, his unit found it essential to park their aircraft in revetments to protect them from allied fragmentation bombs, which were very effective.  While evacuating from a base in France, Hermann, as Gruppe technical officer, was the last plane to leave.  As he prepared to take off, he was horrified to find out that his plane had a flat tire!  Since all of the support equipment had already left, there was no option but to change the tire by hand.  So, with ten men lifting the Bf-109, the tire was changed, and Hermann was able to fly to safety.

In air combat, Hermann shot down four aircraft.  In February 1944, Hermann shot down two B-24s in a single mission, although his airplane had 23 holes in it when he landed.  His other victories included an Auster AOP that he shot down over Monte Cassino (he had been sent out specifically to attack artillery spotters) and a P-47 Thunderbolt.  He never saw a Soviet aircraft in flight because, as he understood it, the Soviets would clear the skies whenever German aircraft were detected on radar.  During one dogfight over Italy, Hermann tried to come to the rescue of a FW-190 Jabo pilot who was being attacked by a Spitfire.  During the combat, the Spitfire put a cannon round into his plane which exploded on the cannon breech in between his legs, wounding one of his knees.  Afterwards, Hermann ended up in a hospital with the FW-190 pilot he tried to save in the bed beside him!

Hermann had the opportunity to sit in the cockpits of a number of enemy aircraft, including a Spitfire and P-38, and also fly against them in mock combat to practice tactics.  Against the P-38, he said the best option was to "fly lower than low."  As the war was drawing to a close, Hermann refused an offer to transfer to JG 301 to fly the Ta-152H, preferring to remain with I/JG 4 at Leck.  He was informed that they were due to convert to the Do-335 ("that monster airplane," as Hermann called it), but such plans ended with the war. 

As one would expect, Hermann had many things to say about the Bf-109.  He pushed the Bf-109 about as far as it would go with regards to performance, having once flown a Bf-109F-4 up to 13 000 metres (over 40,000 feet), where he had to breathe direct pressure oxygen and the temperature was -70 degrees C.  He also dove a Bf-109 to an indicated air speed of 950 km/h, and had a wing root fairing pop off!  Hermann remembers all Bf-109s as having very strong torque, which could be quite unforgiving to a novice pilot.  The interrupter gear for the cowl guns would fail on occasion; if the aircraft had an aluminum propeller, then a small hole would be left.  The wooden propellers, however, would splinter.  He flew a number of missions with the 21 cm rockets (which he called "stovepipes" ) under the wings.  On one occasion, in February 1945, he destroyed a "Stalin" tank with rockets while on an attack mission against a major Soviet offensive ("there was very little ground fire from the Soviets," he remembers).  Hermann also flew an attack mission against the Anzio beachhead using the 21 cm rockets.  Their tactic was to shoot the rockets into the water alongside the transport ships, since they reasoned that the water pressure created by the explosion would do more damage to the ships than a direct hit.  In general, however, Hermann said that the rocket tubes were dropped from normal operations with the Bf-109s because they impeded performance so much.  Hermann was fortunate to have survived the war having only bailed out once.

Regrettably, we only heard a small part of Charlie Fox's wartime memories (he never even talked about the four victories that he achieved).  Charlie enlisted in 1940, but got scarlet fever during training and missed shipping out with the rest of his class and stayed behind as an instructor pilot at Dunville from September 1941 to 1943, flying Harvards.  Once he finally shipped overseas, he was posted to 412 Squadron, flying Spitfires over the continent (he ended the war as the Squadron's technical officer).  Charlie actually had a chance to get checked out as an FW-190 pilot, using an aircraft that surrendered to his unit.  Charlie also saw many other Luftwaffe aircraft up close at Leck immediately after the war, where he had a chance to see legendary test pilot Eric Brown fly an He-162.  Charlie had plenty of fascinating anecdotes to share.  He said that his toughest dogfight ever was over Arnhem in September 1944 against an unmarked Spitfire, which he is convinced was flown by a German.  Jet aircraft also featured prominently in two of Charlie's stories.  In the first, 412 Squadron was past of a sweep by all of 126 Wing (48 aircraft) during the Battle of the Bulge.  Below them, they spotted a formation of six Me-262s in line-abreast formation.  The Spitfires immediately dove in to attack, and Charlie shot a plane down in the first pass.  Once the battle was joined, however, it was discovered that the planes were in fact P-51D Mustangs with wing tanks (which appeared to be the Me-262s engines from above).  What was truly bizarre, however, was the fact that the aircraft continued to fly straight and level even as they were being attacked, and that there were no pilots in the cockpits!  Charlie believes that these planes were some sort of Allied secret weapon "robot planes" (akin to the Aphrodite remote-controlled B-17s and B-24s used to attack high-value targets); at any rate, once the Spitfires returned to base, all records of the fight (including gun camera film) were destroyed.  The other incident happened on January 1^st, 1945, when Charlie and another pilot were ferrying replacement aircraft to their base at Nijmegen.  Bad weather, coupled with the Luftwaffe's Bodenplatte attacks, forced them to divert to Manston, where 616 Squadron RAF was flying Meteor jet fighters.  Although, as tech officer, Charlie knew of the existence of Allied jets, his wingman did not, and suffered from the "jet fear" which the Me-262 and Ar-234 had generated among Allied flyers.  Hence, as they were in the circuit awaiting their turn to land at Manston, Charlie's wingman became quite concerned when he spotted a jet flying nearby.  After repeatedly warning Charlie, "Leader, jet, 3 oclock," he broke off to attack the Meteor (Charlie was unable to risk breaching security by telling his wingman that it was a British jet).  His wingman put a single 20mm round through the Meteor's tail before he was convinced to break off the attack.  Charlie ended the war with 500 hours in a Spitfire cockpit.

Hildegard Weber was the only female engineer at the Blohm und Voss company, where she worked on the giant BV-222 flying boats.  In fact, her first job there was to calculate the centre of gravity of the BV-222 a job which took 2 ½ years, by which time the prototype had actually flown!  Afterwards, she worked with the real aircraft, adjusting its centre of gravity in a huge test rig, and continued with the BV-222 programme throughout the war.  She has very fond memories of Blohm und Voss as a good company to work for. 

Both Hermann and Hildegard had fascinating stories about life in Germany during the Nazi years.  Hermann went to school with the grandchildren of Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the President of Germany, and has fond memories of talking with the President on the schoolgrounds.  He also heard Hitler speak in 1932, during the election campaign.  Hildegard had sobering memories of the bombing raids on Hamburg during the war, and both remembered the investigations in the aftermath of the July 20^th, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler; as Herman put it, as news of the assassination began to come out, "we all hoped that it would work."

Postwar, Hermann had a long and productive career in the electronics industry in Canada, while Hildegard worked with the National Research Council in Canada, helping to produce their first supersonic wind tunnel and working with Atomic Energy Canada trying to devise ways to store spent uranium fuel rods.  Charlie Fox stayed active in the RCAF Reserve, logging 500 flight hours in P-51Ds.  He is an active member of the Harvard Club in Tillsonburg.

As modelers and historians, it is all to easy for us to get wrapped up in the performance stats of the aircraft that we model.  Listening to these pilots gives the aircraft that we build a much more real aspect.  From Charlie Fox's recollection of "a white puff" that he would see whenever a German plane kicked in its MW50 boost to Hermann Weber's description of the Bf-109K-4 as "the ultimate death trap for pilots," whose pilot was "all shook up" whenever the engine-mounted 30mm gun fired, we gain an amazing insight in to the world of sixty years ago by listening to veterans (by the way, the Bf-109K-4 was, according to Hermann, a very poor dogfighter due to its altered centre of gravity).  He also believed that the P-51 was "a much hotter airplane" than any Bf-109.  Among the most interesting and unexpected pieces of information I heard was Hermann's assessment of Romanian fighter pilots.  Having flown with and sometimes commanded Romanian pilots, he felt that they were of a higher quality than German pilot, especially in their flying skills, due to the fact that they were drawn from the nobility and that almost all of them already knew how to fly before they joined the Romanian air force.