I have a friend in Germany who's father was a pilot in WWII. Her father died quite some time ago and they had never discussed his experiences. Her mother passed away this year and now she has a lot of her father's papers, including logbooks and "introduction to aerodynamics" and "introduction to navigation" from about 1934 (the year of his first flight).
The script is hard to read even for a german. It looks like he flew a whole bunch of different A/C, including the Me 262. However, many, if not most, of the flights are 10-20 minutes (or less) and I can't explain such short flights, particularly not in the 1944-45 time frame when I would assume no missions but combat were flown.
She sent me home with 2 of the logbooks. She kept the one that was written in pencil.
Her mother told her that he had once related going out with 10 and he was the only one to return so he apparently did see combat (and I might have seen an entry about that in the logbook she kept) but most of the entries are the same....
Many say Sinflug (or zinflug) or something since the first letter is hard to decipher. For example, on one whole page it lists that as the purpose of the flight, her dad as "Fuehrer" (leader) and under "Begleiter" (companion) it says "2 Men". A/C was the Ju-88 which had 3 seats I think so it was a full compliment. 13 flights in 3 days. One flight of 5 minutes, most in the 20 minute range. 4 consecutive flights in the same aircraft tail number (SW+PI) but all the rest in different tail numbers.
Later in the book, when the A/C was exclusively the Me-262, he flew the same tail number several times in succession.
Also, his rank, according to the logbook cover, was Oberfeldwebel or Staff sgt. In the allied forces at least, weren't all combat pilots officers?
Any idea what this would be all about? Would a test pilot be flying the A/C will all seats full? Could these be systems check out flights for fresh from the factory A/C? Or could combat flights be so short?
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 11:01AM by Tim Morrison.
I have a friend who was flying bombers into Germany from 1939 to 1945 so likely was at times part of the reason for his flights, and yes, for German fighters short flights were the norm since they were trying to attack the bombers as they crossed over on the way to the target, and then those who survived to that point, on the way back. Thus within a max of 20 minutes their target had come and gone, and at times they were scrambled and called back due to mistakes reading the radar or the flight of bombers changed course. These fighters had a short range and were not capable of long missions. This was also the problem for many of the Allies' fighters until long range ones like the P51 were developed that could fly with the bombers and provide protection. There is no proof that he wasn't a test pilot but as the war went on Germany became so short of pilots that they didn't have the luxury and planes were just rolled out and put into combat with an expected life of only a mission or two.
By the way, my bomber pilot friend flew 76 missions, went through 6 planes that though he managed to drag back across the Channel were deemed good only for parts since they had so much battle damage. One time I asked him if he ever got back together with the fellows he had trained with and he quietly laughed and said it wasn't possible, he was the only one who made it back alive.
