BF 109 Defence of The Reich Aces

®
OSPREY AIRCRAF T OF THE ACES • 68
Bf 109 Defence of
the Reich Aces
John Weal
© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
THE STAGE IS SET 6
CHAPTER TWO
STRUGGLES AND
EARLY SUCCESSES 14
CHAPTER THREE
IN THE BALANCE 48
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TIDE TURNS 59
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LAST ACT 77
APPENDICES 86
C O L O U R P L AT E S C O M M E N TA R Y 9 0
INDEX 95

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First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Osprey Publishing,
Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK
44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA
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© 2006 Osprey Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the
copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.
Transferred to digital print on demand 2010
First published 2006

4th impression 2008
Printed and bound by PrintOnDemand-Worldwide.com, Peterborough, UK
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Print ISBN: 978 1 84176 879 3
PDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 78096 348 8
ePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78096 349 5
Editorial by Tony Holmes

Page design by Tony Truscott
Cover Artwork by Mark Postlethwaite
Aircraft Profiles by John Weal
Index by Alan Thatcher
Origination by PPS Grasmere, Leeds, UK
Typeset in Adobe Garamond and Univers
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following individuals for their generous help in providing information and photographs:
Roger Freeman, Chris Goss, Manfred Griehl, Rolf Hase, Uwe Hausen, Helmut Kern, Hal Lester, Walter Matthiesen, Axel Paul,
Tomás Poruba, Dr Alfred Price, Jerry Scutts, Robert Simpson, Nigel Smith and Andrew Thomas.
© Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally restricted. In return, we ask you that you use it for personal, non-commercial pur-
poses only. Please don’t upload this pdf to a peer-to-peer site, email it to everyone you know, or resell it. Osprey Publishing reserves all
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Front cover
On 17 August 1943, over 200 B-17 Flying Fortresses of the Eighth Air Force’s 1st Bomb Wing were despatched to
attack a vital target – the Reich’s major ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt. The bomber crews were expecting
trouble. Their take-off had been delayed by bad weather, and they were a critical three hours or more behind the
B-17s of the 4th Bomb Wing, which were heading for Regensburg. They knew the defending Luftwaffe fighters
would be fully alerted and ready for them. And they were right.
At Eupen, a small Belgian town less than ten miles from the German border, the bombers ‘short-legged’
P-47 Thunderbolt escorts were forced to turn back. The Fortresses pressed on alone into Germany. It was the
moment the Luftwaffe fighter pilots had been waiting for.
Among the first to attack were the 12 rocket-armed Bf 109G-6s of 5./JG 11 down from Jever. Oberleutnant
Heinz Knoke’s ‘Black 1’ was hit by heavy Browning 0.50-calibre machine gun fire as the Staffel jockeyed into
position astern of the bombers. With his port wing damaged and left-hand rocket tube (nicknamed a ‘stovepipe’
by German fighter pilots) shot away, Knoke launched his remaining missile, but without result. Then the rest
of the Staffel bored in.
According to Knoke’s subsequent account of the action, both Feldwebel Erich Führmann, illustrated here
in his ‘Black 9’, and Feldwebel Wilhelm Fest scored hits on B-17s which blew up in mid-air. However,
post-war research suggests that the two 92nd Bomb Group (BG) Flying Fortresses hit in this engagement
suffered only slight damage and later fell victim to conventional fighter attack.
Despite his damaged wing, Heinz Knoke took off again later to attack the bombers returning from Schweinfurt.
He is credited with bringing down the 305th BG’s flak-damaged B-17F 42-30159 Settin’ Bull, which crashed
in Belgium, before finally writing-off his own ‘Black 1’ in a forced landing near Rheinbach.
(Cover artwork by Mark Postlethwaite)

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®

OSPREY AIRCRAF T OF THE ACES • 68

© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

Visit the Osprey website

• Information about forthcoming books

• Read extracts and see sample pages

• Sign up for our free newsletters

• Competitions and prizes

© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

© 2006 Osprey Publishing Ltd.

Transferred to digital print on demand 2010

First published 2006

Printed and bound by PrintOnDemand-Worldwide.com, Peterborough, UK

Print ISBN: 978 1 84176 879 3

PDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 78096 348 8

ePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78096 349 5

Editorial by Tony Holmes

© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com

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