He 177 Last Operational Sortie

[Brady]

Anyone have a clue about this, the last Operational Sortie carried out by He 177's?

[James A Pratt III]

KG 1 last big op was on the night of 28/29 July 1944 according to the book Bagration to Berlin. Note the Germans were suffering a major fuel shortage at this time made worse by the Rumanian defection in August 1944.

[Brady]

Thanks, you often see references for Other German bombers doing small bombing runs late in the war at night even into 45 but I’ve never seen anything that says an He 177 was doing that

[James A Pratt III]

As for KG 40 and KG 100 in the west there last ops may have been sometime in July or possibly August 1944.

Wekusa 1 was equiped with He 177s in early 1944 from Luftwaffedata.co.uk the unit moved to France in Jun/Jul 1944 flew a few ops and on 19 August flew back to Germany where the unit was disbanded in Sept 1944.

I think the Germans planned a few ops with the He 177 in late 1944 but could not do them do to the fuel shortage.

[Brady]

One thing that surprises me often when I’m reading unit histories for the Germans is that they would put together fuel for operations, but most of those are frankly firefighter units, I know there were bomber units operating occasionally up until the end of the war if the target was deemed important enough, like the various attacks on Remagen Bridge, or JU 88’s bombing Neimegan.

I think I just find it hard to believe that no He 177 sortie at all was flown for the last 6-7 months of the war, even if that only included a couple of aircraft.

[Ponury]

It could be so.