Last plane out of Berlin - who was the pilot?

[wartourist]

Haste is waste
The last week I have looked up the flying-out-of-Berlin episode in some ten to twelve books; memoirs of every known person connected to the episode as well as accounts of acknowledged historians. Nonetheless I was unable to determine for certain what the real circumstances were, and I must admit that I eventually came to the conclusion that Hanna Reitch was at the stick and Greim the passenger, leaving the courageous, unknown pilot behind to perish in the last raging battle for the Tiergarten and Spreebogen. That would also of course also explain why he remained unknown.

I have drawn up timelines and schedules and quoted the mentioned works in length to support this conclusion and looked forward to present my findings here for criticism and renewed debate, but alas, it should not be.

Haste is waste as the saying goes. Today the original 1951 memoir of Hanna Reitsch reached me from the Library of the Danish Air Force, and the German text turned out to be much more elaborate than the later English translation.

On page 342 Hanna confirms the identity of the pilot, insofar she states that it was the same pilot who flew them from Rechlin to Gatow a couple of days before, and she continues: “Jetzt mussten wir zu dritt herausfliegen, obwohl die Maschine nur zweisitzig war.”

I translate this as: “Now the three of us had to fly out together, although the machine only was a two-seater”.
Thus, all three of them got out of Berlin.

However, this does not clarify the identity of the pilot of course, but at least we know now, that he did get out of Berlin at the very last moment and thus may have survived the war.

Stationed in Rechlin, there is a fair chance that he was a pilot in Jagdgeschwader 4 (Fighter Wing 4 or JG4). Unfortunately, the Air Force Library does not poses Erik Mombeek’s book: Storming the Bombers, Vol II (1944-45), which is a detailed account of JG4 (and it costs an arm and a leg at Amazon).

If any of you gentlemen out there owns this book and have the time to look for a reference to the Arado pilot, I would be most grateful for any information.

Dan

[Larry D.]

Hi Dan,

Congratulations - you made great progress. Your best bet for finding someone with the JG 4 history is on this web site:

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/

It is full of Luftwaffe fighter buffs and you will definitely find members there who have it. I have directed a lot of people there and most of them got the answers they were seeking. Unfortunately, the site owner and webmaster will put you in quarantine after you register and it will be 1 to 6 weeks before you can post a question. He has caught a lot of criticism for this requirement, but that's the way it is.

Good luck.

[Bokkop]

This is a really fascinating question.

I wonder if you came across the name of Jürgen Bosser in this regard, and whether you discarded it on the basis of your exhaustive research? I haven't seen anything you would call real evidence, but there is a reference in this regard in El enigma nazi by José Lesta Mosquera, Miguel Pedrero Gómez and also a few on webpages.

[wartourist]

Larry: Thanks for the link! I have applied for membership, but - like you said - it may take anything up to six weeks for me to be aprroved. I have tried to state my case as convincingly as possible, so let's see what happens

Bokkop: Thanks for the input. I succeeded in locating the book online, and page 206-7 really recounts the flying-out-story. Unfortunately, my Spanish is virtually non-existing, but I understand that much that one Jürgen Bosser is accredited to be the pilot, whose name we seek, and there is what seems to be a vivid personal account of the event from Mr. Bosser. This may easily be a cock-and-bull story - I know nothing about the veracity or track record of the authors, and so much is floating around out there - but it's a link worth following, so thanks again!

And, rather intriguingly, Hanna Reitch on page 330 of her German language account refers to the pilot as "Feldwebel B. !"

The search goes on. The trail is getting hotter. Will revert soon, I hope

Dan

[ian the englander]

Good work Dan (and Bokkop),maybe this is one "mystery" thats going to be solved.
Another question,what happened to the Storch that Reitsch and Greim flew into central Berlin from Gatow ?

[wartourist]

• Anton Joachimsthaler, 1995: “In the meantime, however, the Fieseler Storch in which both of them [Greim – Reitsch] had flown in from Gatow had been destroyed by shellfire near the Victory Column. A new plane was summoned from Rechlin Airfield.”. (Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler, p 126)
• Also Erich Kuby, in his 1978 account, says: “Greim’s Fieseler Storch was now a wreck in the Tiergarten. Luckily a daredevil Luftwaffe pilot had succeeded in bringing a training machine into the city during the night, and now flew Greim and Hanna Reisch out of Berlin and back to Rechlin”. (Kuby, The Russians and Berlin 1945, p 149)
• However, Nicolaus von Below, Hitlers Luftwaffe adjutant, states in his memoir: “On the 28th I succeeded, with the greatest difficulty, in getting his [von Greim] Fieseler Storch clear to start, after which Greim and his companion got out of the shambles and reached Rechlin – a very meritable achievement”. (von Below, At Hitlers side, p 238-9).

So there are different opinions. However, consensus among historians seem to be that the plane was destroyed in the fighting, and thus von Below's recollection - albeit he was a "zeitzeuge" - must be wrong. A bit strange though.

Dan

[Larry D.]

I find it somewhat odd that Jürgen Bosser, by all accounts a skilled pilot and an NCO, does not appear in any of the decoration/award list books for Luftwaffe personnel that include all awardees of the Ehrenpokal, DKiG and the Ritterkreuz. Just about anyone who even flew an airplane during the war got the Ehrenpokal. Nor does his name appear on this very extensive and comprehensive web site:

http://www.ww2awards.com/person.asp?id=18&abc=B

There is something very curious here with that name.

Larry

[wartourist]

Yeah Larry, you are right. I also wonder why the guy appears in a Spanish language book only and apparently nowhere else. A Spanish translation, yes, but thus a German - or at least English - account should exist?

The link: http://books.google.dk/books?id=elo4nY1 ... er&f=false

Until further proof of Jürgen Bossers identity and role in the Greim/Reitsch flight can be established, I think this account should be taken with a grain of salt. Might as well be a "Gregory Douglas tale"

Hope the 12'oclock High guys will let me in soon...

Dan

[wartourist]

Alright, I don't think we need to concern ourselves too much with the book El enigma Nazi. Found this brief description of the contents:

SYNOPSIS
In this book you will find, among other things: the secret history of Adolf Hitler and his quest for the real power objects scattered around the world. Raiders of the Ark of the Covenant of the SS, the mysterious flying saucers in the Third Reich. The deadly triangle: the swastika, the magic and the Antichrist.

The search goes on, in other words

Dan

[Larry D.]

The author of that book used NO primary sources. He only used the same old shop-worn, dog-eared published works that you have already checked. So that is prima face evidence that the name is suspect.

The 12 O'Clock High moderators "remind" the site's owner daily that people are waiting to be approved. If you hear nothing in the next 5 to 7 days, let me know and I will post your question for you. You are able to read the posts, right?

L.

[wartourist]

Thanks a lot, Larry. Will do...

Dan

[ian the englander]

So the storch was destroyed.
Many years ago i read a novel by Jack Higgins "Valhalla exchange", some of the central characters (including Martin Bormann) use that storch to escape from Berlin,in the plot the destruction of the storch was faked.I wonder if Higgins had noted some differences in the accounts of the storchs fate when he did his background research,just a thought.

[phylo_roadking]

Ian -

• Anton Joachimsthaler, 1995: “In the meantime, however, the Fieseler Storch in which both of them [Greim – Reitsch] had flown in from Gatow had been destroyed by shellfire near the Victory Column. A new plane was summoned from Rechlin Airfield.”. (Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler, p 126)
• Also Erich Kuby, in his 1978 account, says: “Greim’s Fieseler Storch was now a wreck in the Tiergarten. Luckily a daredevil Luftwaffe pilot had succeeded in bringing a training machine into the city during the night, and now flew Greim and Hanna Reisch out of Berlin and back to Rechlin”. (Kuby, The Russians and Berlin 1945, p 149)
• However, Nicolaus von Below, Hitlers Luftwaffe adjutant, states in his memoir: “On the 28th I succeeded, with the greatest difficulty, in getting his [von Greim] Fieseler Storch clear to start, after which Greim and his companion got out of the shambles and reached Rechlin – a very meritable achievement”. (von Below, At Hitlers side, p 238-9).

...in Ye Olde Pre-Internete Days, Higgins may simply not have known about all the various sources recording the various potential fates of the Storch.

[wartourist]

Hi guys,
Just to let you know I'm still alive and that I haven't forgotten about this interesting issue. I'm in "quarantine" at the 12 O'Clock High Forum, awaiting approval as a bonafide member, and it seems to take forever As a humble supplicant I cannot pose the Luftwaffe questions, I wish or even read the posts of others, so bear with me for a while.

They gotta let me in some day - I hope

Dan

[Larry D.]

Hi guys,
Just to let you know I'm still alive and that I haven't forgotten about this interesting issue. I'm in "quarantine" at the 12 O'Clock High Forum, awaiting approval as a bonafide member, and it seems to take forever As a humble supplicant I cannot pose the Luftwaffe questions, I wish or even read the posts of others, so bear with me for a while.
They gotta let me in some day - I hope
Dan

Why the owner/webmaster of 12 O'Clock High forces new people to wait like this is beyond me. I have never encountered another web site that does this. The moderators complaint about it to the guy all the time, but to no avail. It's a quite active site with 20 or so new threads a day and 200-300 new posts a day, so maybe the owner has tired of it, increasingly viewing it as a headache that takes too much of his time, and would like to disconnect from it. He rarely ever makes an appearance himself and that alone suggests a waning interest level. Hang in there.

L.