Werner Baumbach

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Werner Baumbach (born December 27, 1916 in Cloppenburg ; † October 20, 1953 near Buenos Aires , Argentina ) was a German Air Force officer in World War II .

Life

Werner Baumbach was a glider pilot during his school days , joined the Air Force as a flag junior in 1936 and completed his training in Berlin-Gatow. In 1938 Baumbach was promoted to lieutenant . He then worked as a blind flight instructor and test pilot and was one of the first to fly the Junkers Ju 88 .

At the beginning of the Second World War, Baumbach flew missions with Kampfgeschwader 30 during the raid on Poland . Then he was used over the North Sea and Norway. After deployments during the Battle of Narvik , he was awarded the Narvik Shield . On April 19, 1940, he succeeded in a direct bomb hit on the French light cruiser Émile Bertin off Namsos , which then had to return to France for repairs. For this he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class. On May 8, 1940, he was also awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , as it was wrongly assumed that the cruiser had been sunk.

During the campaign in the west , Baumbach was slightly wounded and on June 1, 1940 was promoted to lieutenant and appointed squadron commander. After the French campaign, he flew a special transport from Berlin via Moscow to Japan . After this special company he flew missions against ship targets around the British Isles and was involved in the bombing of Scapa Flow . For the sinking of enemy ship space to a considerable extent (allegedly 240,000 GRT , whereby it must be taken into account that the numbers were usually too high due to misjudgments by the aircraft crew and for propaganda reasons) he was awarded the Knight's Cross Oak Leaves on July 14, 1941 .

At the beginning of the German-Soviet War , Baumbach's squadron was stationed in northern Norway. In July 1942, as captain from Hajo Herrmann , he took over the command of III./KG 30, which was then also deployed in Norway. By August 1942, Baumbach had allegedly sunk 300,000 GRT in enemy ship space. On August 16, 1942, he was the first fighter pilot to receive the Oak Leaves with Swords for the Knight's Cross.

After completing over 200 combat missions and being promoted to major , he was transferred to the Air Force Staff in Germany in December 1942. Baumbach worked here on new weapon systems, so u. a. on the Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb . He was also involved in the further development of the so-called " mistletoe team ", in which an unmanned, explosive-filled Junkers Ju 88 or Heinkel He 111 was attached to a manned Focke-Wulf Fw 190 . In the air, the unmanned machine should then be released at a distance of about one kilometer from the target and find its target on its own. The production was soon stopped in favor of the urgently needed fighter aircraft.

On November 15, 1944 Baumbach was the simultaneous promotion to lieutenant colonel for the Commodore of the formed Special Operations kampfgeschwader 200 appointed. In the winter of 1944/45 he was temporarily entrusted with the business of the general of the fighter pilots , and on January 5, 1945 he was promoted to colonel . When he realized in January 1945 that Hitler and his immediate superior Hermann Göring wanted to continue the war only at the expense of the people, he wrote Göring a letter in which he spoke out against the further conduct of the war. He also returned all his offices and medals. However, Goring did not react. At the beginning of March he was commissioned by Hitler to lead bridge destruction operations on the Oder and Neisse. Together with his friend Albert Speer , he tried to oppose Hitler's Nero order. In Hamburg he was able to convince the Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann not to defend the city anymore. Hamburg was then surrendered without a fight.

After the Second World War

After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , Baumbach, who had been appointed as an advisor by Hitler's successor Karl Dönitz , was arrested in Flensburg on May 23, 1945 . The Allies accused him of violations of martial law by units under his control, but this could not be confirmed.

After his release in February 1946, Baumbach worked with Harvard historian Bruce C. Hopper on studies on World War II. In 1948 he went to Argentina and became a military advisor to the local air force . During this time he also wrote two books: "Too Late - Rise and Fall of the German Air Force" and "Too Early - Space War and World Revolution", in which he dealt with future large-scale strategies. Both books first appeared in Argentina and later in Germany.

On October 20, 1953, he fell into the Río de la Plata with an Avro Lancaster near Buenos Aires and was killed in the process. His remains were buried in his hometown of Cloppenburg .

Awards

Web links

literature

  • Baumbach, Werner (1916–1953) in Robert Wistrich : Who was who in the Third Reich? Supporters, followers, opponents from politics, business, military, art and science. Harnack, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88966-004-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 206.
personal data
SURNAME Baumbach, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German air force officer and bomber pilot in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Cloppenburg
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1953
Place of death near Buenos Aires