Sonderkommando Elbe
The "Sonderkommando Elbe" (Skdo.) (Also "Rammkommando Elbe") was a unit of the German air force in the final phase of the Second World War , in order to stop, or at least reduce , the incoming flights of the attacking bomber groups of the 8th Air Force despite increasing material inferiority .
planning
As early as autumn 1944, the then Colonel Hajo Herrmann had suggested destroying the enemy bombers by ramming them in the air. Since the turn of the year 1944/45, volunteers were recruited for a special mission by fighter pilots. There was talk of a 10% chance of survival. The term self-sacrifice -Use however, was not used. In the search for pilots, 2,000 volunteers came forward, of which 300 were selected.
According to contemporary witnesses, the report on this special operation was made without any pressure. Every volunteer was free to withdraw from his / her report an hour before deployment. No member of the Sonderkommando made use of it.
The German ram hunters differed from the Japanese kamikaze in the theoretical possibility of parachuting out after a collision . The ramming itself was intended as the only option, as the ramming planes had no armament for long dogfights.
In March 1945, the Elbe special command with 300 pilots was set up at the Stendal-Borstel airfield (approx. 60 km north of Magdeburg) in order to complete a training course at the air base . The course director was Major Otto Köhnke.
The command had 184 fighter aircraft of the type Messerschmitt Bf 109 . The weapons, the armor around the pilot's seat, the transmitter and other things were removed from the machines. All that remained was a 13 mm machine gun with 50 rounds of ammunition. This was done to make the aircraft lighter and more manoeuvrable, to increase the summit height to 10,000 m and to save material.
commitment
There is only one known use of this command as part of the Werwolf company , when 1,300 American heavy bombers , accompanied by 700 to 800 fighters , flew into Germany on April 7, 1945 . The German hunters took off from the Altmark air bases in Stendal , Salzwedel , Gardelegen , the Sachau field airfield near Gardelegen, from Magdeburg and from Saxon airfields.
A total of 23 bombers could be brought down by ramming, another 28 bombers were shot down by Me 262 of JG 7 . In the aerial battles over the Steinhuder Meer , 133 German fighter planes were destroyed, 40 of them after attempted or successful ramming. Several of the German pilots parachuted and were shot by US fighter pilots.
The Sonderkommando was disbanded on April 17th and the pilots were transferred to Berlin to fight as infantry against the Red Army in the Battle of Berlin .
Commemoration
To the north of Bockelskamp , municipality of Wienhausen near Celle, there is a memorial stone for the fighter pilots of the Rammkommando Elbe and the Sonderkommando Bienenstock , which former members of the commandos erected.
Movie
Christoph Weber (director): The last contingent - Hitler's death pilots. Documentary film with interviews with survivors, Germany (WDR), 2005, 52 min.
See also
- Air War in World War II
- Spiegel online: German Kamikaze pilots
- Not to be confused with the term Elbe Command . There was a so-called prisoner work detachment in the Neuengamme concentration camp . This construction team was deployed under inhumane conditions to expand an Elbe canal.
literature
- Dietrich Alsdorf: In the footsteps of the “Elbe command” Rammjäger , Wölfersheim-Berstadt 2001, ISBN 3-7909-0746-4 .
- Arno Rose: Radical aerial combat. The story of d. German Rammjäger , Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-87943-541-3 .
- Ulrich Saft: The bitter end of the Air Force. "Wilde Sau", Sturmjäger, Rammjäger, Death Flyer, "Beehive" , Langenhagen 1992, ISBN 3-9801789-1-9 .
- Barry Smith: Kamikaze - and the West (PDF; 79 kB) . In: Georg Meggle (ed.): Terror and the war against him: Public reflections . Mentis, Paderborn 2003, pp. 107-118.