Sicily '43. James Holland

from the sacked and disgraced Generalmajor Theo Osterkamp, the former fighter commander – Jafü – on Sicily. Galland had been commander of fighters back home in Germany, defending the Reich, but had no experience of the Mediterranean and, while a notable fighter wing commander earlier in the war, had had no staff training and had been thrown in at the deep end to say the least. The previous evening, he had summoned Steinhoff to the Trapani fighter control base beneath the summit of Monte Erice, the mountain that dominated the plain below. The route up there was a winding dusty road, one hairpin after another until, beneath a sheer wall of craggy rock, it reached a small plateau that extended outwards. Several buildings had been constructed, while pneumatic drills continued work on a shelter dug directly into the cliffs. From there, the whole western tip of Sicily could be seen stretched out before them – the white houses of Trapani town and its small port and then, further to the south, the airfield, and beyond that Marsala. It was nothing if not a stunning view. After briefing him on recent operations, Galland had then told Steinhoff he wanted to talk to the Gruppen and Staffel commanders, and so they had headed back down the mountain road to the airfield.

      Sitting on stools and in deckchairs outside the dispersal hut beneath gnarled old olive trees, Steinhoff’s commanders had listened in silence as Galland talked about the air defence of the Reich and the tactics that had been developed against the American four-engine heavy bombers. The key, he had told them, was to fly straight at them, opening fire at the nose of the bomber as close as possible then sweeping on over the top. The general also told them that against American heavy bombers, there was a 50 per cent chance of being shot down during a rear attack, and similarly poor odds for a side or flank attack too. It was hardly very cheering. On the other hand, a head-on attack greatly reduced the chance of being hit – but it did mean a pilot had only about two seconds of firing time, because it was only effective when really close, and with a closing speed of nearly 600 mph that didn’t leave much margin for error. Steinhoff had watched his officers start to glaze over. When Galland had finished, not one had asked any questions.

      ‘Very well then,’ Galland had said. ‘Until tomorrow.’ And then he had driven back to Monte Erice. Steinhoff had barely slept, the general’s words ringing in his ears: ‘Get in close.’ ‘Don’t fire too soon.’ ‘Lead them in head-on close formation.’ Steinhoff knew one had to have nerves of steel to pull off these frontal attacks. He was not feeling confident, and in any case, he had already been a front-line fighter pilot for three long years – over France, during the Battle of Britain, over the Eastern Front and then in those difficult final days in Tunisia when suddenly it had become clear that the Luftwaffe was in deep and chronic decline and the Allies, with their shiny Spitfires and Lightnings, their Marauders and Flying Fortresses, had dramatically and decisively begun to wield the upper hand.

      Steinhoff was fed up with fighting, fed up with the war, fed up with not having enough of anything. And he was utterly exhausted. The intensity, the constant fear, and now, here on Sicily, the blistering, energy-sapping heat.

      Early that day, his III. Gruppe had arrived from their base in Sardinia, and then so too had III. Gruppe Jagdgeschwader 53, the Pik As, or Ace of Spades. This was all part of Galland’s plan to show any Allied bomber formations that dared to fly over a heavy response by a mass of fighter aircraft; but with some eighty Messerschmitts now parked up around the airfield complex here at Trapani, Steinhoff was only thinking of the catastrophe that might unfold if they were heavily attacked by Allied bombers here.

      The hours passed and the heat grew. Steinhoff wondered how many hours he had spent in a deckchair since the war had begun. ‘A day seems very long when it is spent in waiting,’ he noted, ‘with nothing to occupy one’s imagination except the war in the air.’1 He wondered whether he would be able to lead this huge formation of fighters into the bombers successfully; it was no easy matter manoeuvring en masse because the distances on the inside of a turn were shorter than those on the outside. Leading a Staffel of, say, nine, was reasonably straightforward, but eighty … Then those other thoughts kept creeping into his mind – thoughts impossible to keep out: the raking fire of the Flying Fortresses’ .50-calibre machine guns, the bailing out, the descent, the vainly hoping someone would spot the rubber dinghy on that vast dark Mediterranean Sea.

      Then Oberst Günther ‘Franzl’ Lützow arrived, the new Inspector South for the Luftwaffe. An old friend of Steinhoff’s, he had been the Luftwaffe’s second pilot to amass a staggering one hundred aerial victories. Steinhoff hadn’t seen him since the Eastern Front the previous summer.

      ‘I want to be here for your first big defensive battle!’2 called Lützow as he clambered out of his car. Steinhoff led him over to dispersal and to the mass of pilots sitting waiting under the shade of the olive trees. All this talk of big aerial battles was making Steinhoff feel increasingly on edge.

      ‘Today’s your big chance,’ Lützow told the pilots.3 ‘You must keep close together when you attack and dismiss from your mind any thought of mixing it with the Spitfires. The Fortresses are like a fleet of battleships and you can only get in among them if you break through their defensive fire in a compact phalanx.’

      ‘For God’s sake, Franzl,’ Steinhoff snapped, ‘spare me that awful patter!4 For days now, advice and instructions have been raining down on our heads from on high. The General keeps dangling the gallant pilots of the Reich Air Defence as a shining example before our eyes.’ It was, continued Steinhoff, enough to make all his men start to feel inferior. The reality was that, for some time now, the older veterans had been gradually, one by one, falling by the wayside, while the new boys being sent to him were short of hours and had had almost no tactical training – and, such were the fuel shortages, there was little opportunity to lick them into shape. ‘You people don’t know this horrible theatre yet,’ he continued. ‘It’s mostly water and in the long run it gets us all. They’ll wear us down by keeping us grounded and destroying our parks and workshops.’ He was now in full flow. ‘You don’t, by any chance, do you, believe in the Teutonic superhero who, after a bombing raid, rises from his slit trench, shakes the dust from his feet and ascends on steely pinions into the icy heavens, there to wreak havoc among the Flying Fortresses?’

      For a long moment, Lützow stared at him, as though suddenly he had accepted there was no longer any point keeping up the charade. Then he said: ‘Yes, but how’s it all going to end here?’5

      That was the question Steinhoff had been asking himself. It was what all the old-timers had been wondering. They’d lost Tunisia. It wasn’t going well in the east. In western Germany, the Ruhr was being systematically bombed by the RAF each night and by the Americans each day. The Allies were getting stronger, while they were growing weaker. How was it going to end?

      The discussion was suddenly silenced by anti-aircraft fire, followed by a deep rumble from the east, behind Monte Erice, getting louder with every moment. The pilots jumped up and ran for it. Steinhoff heard the whistle of bombs falling even as he fled towards the nearest slit-trench, then leaped for it, landing on the back of someone who had got there first. A carpet of bombs exploded in rapid succession, each one closer, the ground shaking, the noise immense. Steinhoff glanced across at Lützow, dust covering his head and at the back of his throat and in his lungs. Runnels of sweat pouring down his face marked lines through the dust on his skin. Steinhoff pressed his face to the ground as a bomb crashed horribly close, almost bursting eardrums, covering them in a swathe of grit and filling their lungs once more with choking smoke and dust.

      And then the bombs stopped falling and the roar of aero-engines faded away. Slowly, unsteadily, they got to their feet and paused for a moment, legs dangling over the edge of the trench in case a second wave appeared. Ammunition from a burning plane was popping somewhere not far away. As they eventually got to their feet, Steinhoff saw splinters of glass; a little way away two ground crew, hands on hips, stood watching the burning wreckage of an Me109.

      At the group hut, it turned out the phone line had been cut; soon afterwards a Kübelwagen appeared with a message from Galland asking Steinhoff to call immediately from one of the Staffel dispersal huts. Steinhoff hurried over to 1. Staffel, where the medical officer was tending a row of wounded ground crew. There, at least, the line was still working.

      Galland