The Strategy of a Luftwaffe Ace
The Strategy of a Luftwaffe Ace
'Black Tulip' - a recent biography of Erich Hartmann "the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare"
On 29 October 1943, Erich Hartmann was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for destroying 148 enemy aircraft - yet he was only halfway through his overall ‘score’. His final victory came on the last day of the war when, just hours before the German surrender, a Soviet fighter became his 352nd victim.
The following excerpt from Black Tulip: The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace looks at his first success and considers how his overall outlook, his avoidance of dogfights, led to his long-term survival and success:
Hartmann was lucky that he walked away from his first encounter with the Soviets in one piece. After he brought his gliding 109 down in the sunflowers, he connected with the group of German soldiers in the trucks, who drove him the 30 kilometers back to his airfield. But his punishment once he returned was severe. He was reprimanded for seven specific infractions during the mission, not the least of which were leaving Rossmann, his leader, and losing a fighter without inflicting any damage on an enemy plane. He was taken off the flight schedule and had to help the ground crews for three days.
Fellow pilot Alfred Grislawski later recalled Rossmann’s frustrated assessment. “That Hartmann,” said Rossmann, “thinks he can behave in just any way because he is an officer … I refuse to fly with him again until he has learned to behave decently.” He did learn, apparently, because he flew even more with Rossmann, who by all accounts was a demanding but skilled teacher.
Hartmann scored his first victory on his 19th mission, a free-hunt scramble on November 5 [1942]. Above the river town of Digora he spotted the lumpy profile of an Il-2 Sturmovik, the armor-plated Soviet workhorse that was becoming all too familiar to Eastern Front pilots. It seemed like such an easy target: the Sturmovik was slow, heavy, and not very maneuverable. But there was a reason people called it the Flying Tank. It was armored to the gills, and later versions had two crew members, one of whom could return fire on an advancing predator using a machine gun mounted on the upper fuselage. The Sturmovik was celebrated in the Soviet Union as the bomber that helped to beat back the German Panzer tanks that had been so relentless in their early advances. It was, in fact, indispensable, and it became the most mass-produced military aircraft in history. The Soviets built more than 36,000 of them.
Once he had a visual on the Sturmovik, Hartmann did what any excitable pilot would do at the sight of a good target: he hit the throttle, reeled his 109 into a six-o’clock firing position, then fired and fired again - only to see the rounds from his guns either fly off into empty space or patter off the Sturmovik’s rugged fuselage. So he took another approach, this time flying in from slightly below. He let his crosshairs settle over the Sturmovik’s unarmored, grease-stained belly and chin-mounted oil cooler. He let go with another burst when the Soviet machine was fewer than 50 meters away, and it bellowed black, dirty smoke. Hartmann had his first kill.
But then his 109 started shuddering violently. It was the engine. Shrapnel from the Sturmovik had exploded toward Hartmann and hit his aircraft before he could get out of the way, and the damage was severe enough that he was going to have to either bail out or make yet another belly landing. He chose to stay with the aircraft and set it down, once again, in a field. He hit the dirt in another violent skid, fishtailing to a stop after plowing a couple of hundred yards. Another crash-landing and another 109 scratched off the inventory list—but this time he had at least done some good with it.
He heard another Daimler-Benz engine overhead and looked up to see his wingman, who had witnessed the whole event, circling overhead. His partner wagged his wings, a sign of acknowledgement that he saw the wreck and that Hartmann was alive, and before long Hartmann, again in German-held territory, was picked up and sent on his way back to debrief.
He returned having learned a lesson: although point-blank shooting had been the key to his success, it was also dangerous. He knew that his likelihood of scoring hits increased with proximity to the enemy, but so did the prospect that his plane would take damage from the wreckage. To Hartmann, the benefits of the approach always outweighed the costs, and this informed the strategy that would serve him extraordinarily well over the next couple of years on the front. Though occasionally rattled as the fighting picked up (Grislawski also recalled Hartmann being sent on leave so he could clear his head after an airborne collision and resulting crash), Hartmann made it through those harrowing first months that seem to test almost any fighter pilot. With experience came confidence, clout in the squadron, and kills. Many, many kills.
Kills in the Hundreds
If you were to plot Hartmann’s earliest aerial victories on a graph, you’d see that his pace was gradual at first and then accelerated, with some wobbles, around his 15th kill. This was when he really developed his confidence and effectiveness, and the pace only accelerated from there. By this point in the war, roughly seven months into his deployment, he had seen the range of what the Soviets had to throw at him: everything from nimble MiG-1 and Lagg-3 fighters to the tank-like Sturmovik and larger, lumbering bombers like the twin-prop Boston, an American design. He had subsequently conceived, tested, and optimized his preferred attack style over a suitably large sample size of airborne encounters.
In a sense, this sort of analysis is exactly how Hartmann would have assessed his own performance. Where there was information and experience available, he consulted it before acting.
Hartmann’s formula for achieving kills, which he expressed frequently as “see, decide, attack,” was tailored to fit the Eastern Front air war, and it wasn’t really a dogfighting strategy per se. It was more of an anti-dogfighting strategy.
Hartmann’s Soviet enemies were, generally, less capable than the British and American pilots on the Western Front, which meant not only that they were easier to shoot down, but also that they were easier to evade and disengage from if the odds weren’t right.
Furthermore, Hartmann’s most common mission type was the “free hunt,” in which he was untethered to other ground or air units and could simply go find the enemy planes, engage them, and return to base. This contrasts with a typical bomber escort mission, for example, which limits fighter planes’ movements and initiative, as well as the fuel available for tangling with enemies. Hartmann fought unshackled.
Soviet aircraft, for much of the war, lagged behind German and other Allied designs. Even when better fighters arrived, Hartmann retained the crucial advantage of experience. The Luftwaffe had already had the Spanish Civil War to practice using the Bf 109 to its greatest effect, and Hartmann exploited its strengths relative to his Soviet adversaries (small size, good low-altitude performance, high degree of automation, armament, climb rate) while minimizing its weaknesses (turn rate, endurance, high wing loading). For example, Hartmann could depend on the 109’s relative superiority in the dive to get away from any engagements that weren’t optimal for him. In dogfighting (as in any fight) it is an enormous luxury to disengage at will, and Hartmann almost always resisted the temptation for “just one more.” Better to live and fight another day, he would say.
© Erik Schmidt 2020, Black Tulip. Reproduced courtesy of Casemate Publishers.
This excerpt from Black Tulip: The Life and Myth of Erich Hartmann, the World's Top Fighter Ace reflects author Erik Schmidt’s approach. This is a lucid exposition of extraordinary success in aerial combat and the context in which Hartmann fought. A talented flyer who found himself in very particular circumstances, he was not only determined but lucky - surviving sixteen crash landings. A fascinating story well told.
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