Combat Squadron 200

Combat Squadron 200
active	Early 1944 to April 1945
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	air force
Branch of service	Air force
Type	Combat Squadron
structure	Squadron staff and 4 groups

The Kampfgeschwader 200 ( KG 200 ), a special association of the Wehrmacht air force for particularly difficult combat and transport missions as well as for the testing and use of “captured aircraft”, was set up by order of February 21, 1944. The squadron identification was A3.

tasks

The Kampfgeschwader 200 acquired its reputation as a ghost, ghost or spy squadron by deploying and supplying agents of the Abwehr and later of the Reich Security Main Office in the enemy hinterland. One of the missions was the "Operation Zeppelin ", in which Josef Stalin was supposed to be killed in an assassination attempt in July 1944. The KG 200 was also responsible for testing new weapons, preparing strategic attacks with special weapons such as B. the mistletoe aircraft ( Eisenhammer company ), the combat of important targets with special weapons and the transport of strategically valuable goods with long-range aircraft from Manchuria occupied by Japan . Volunteers for so-called total deployments of the so-called Leonidas squadron were trained at KG 200, but were no longer deployed with Hitler due to the intervention of the then squadron commodore Werner Baumbach .

The "Company Zeppelin" was an independent organization of the Reich Security Main Office, Office Group VI C, with the abbreviation "C / Z" (see business distribution plan of the RSHA from 1941 ) and thus not a command company of the KG 200. With regard to the planned "Stalin assassination" it came u. a. for the interaction of "C / Z" (which provided the agents) and the KG 200 (which provided the aircraft).

history

The combat squadron emerged from the test unit entrusted with special tasks of the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force and the Transport Column XI OST; the flying personnel consisted of experienced crews. The association was subordinate to the Luftflotte Reich , on the Eastern Front as the flying association of Luftflotte 6 ( v. Greim ), and had an aircraft fleet of almost forty different types, including cargo gliders and seaplanes as well as American Douglas DC-3s and about twenty four-engine Flying Fortress bombers and Liberator . The detachment commandos were distributed as independent units under cover names such as "Carmen", "Clara" or "Olga" over the German sphere of influence; agent flights were made to Iraq and the Kalmyk steppe with long-distance transporters Junkers Ju 290 . On the airfield Finow in Berlin , the KG 200 maintained a special wharf where his machines were equipped for secret orders.

The staff and parts of the squadron were disbanded in April 1945.

Squadron commanders

from February 1944: Colonel i. G. Heinrich Heigl
from November 15, 1944: Lieutenant Colonel Werner Baumbach
from March 6, 1945: Major Adolf von Harnier

Known squadron members

Karl Düsterberg (1917–2014) founded the company apetito in Rheine in 1958

Horst Rudat (1920–1982), was from 1977 to 1980, as major general of the air force of the German armed forces , commander of the air transport command

Peter Wilhelm Stahl (1913–2001) was a lieutenant colonel in the German Air Force and an aviation author

literature

Günther W. Gellermann: Moscow calls Army Group Center ... - What was not in the Wehrmacht report - The operations of the secret Kampfgeschwader 200 in World War II. Bernard & Graefe, 1988, ISBN 3-7637-5856-9 .
PW Stahl: "Secret Squadron" KG 200 . The truth after over 30 years. 7th edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-613-01034-8 .
Geoffrey Thomas: KG200: Luftwaffe's Most Secret Squadron. Hikoki Publications, August 2004, ISBN 1-902109-33-3 .
JD Gilman, John Clive: The Heaven Dogs. Kampfgeschwader 200th Scherz Munich, November 1982, ISBN 3-502-10268-6 .