‘Fifty years after his crossings he still felt fear of being shot down approaching the UK border’
lovely man with a warm personality and a gift for words.
She celebrated what would have been his 100th birthday on March 10 with lunch at the RAF Club in London with stepbrother Rob, just before the country went into lockdown.
Dr Doe, who lives near Fowey in Cornwall, adds: “I’ll be thinking of him and all the other men as well on the 80th anniversary. They were a pretty amazing generation.”
ONE OF THE Luftwaffe aces opposing them during the battle was Ulrich Steinhilper, who shot down five RAF planes.after growing up in a small village near Stuttgart where his father was the tiny school’s only teacher and his mother gave piano lessons, he joined the Luftwaffe when an officer visited his school looking for recruits in 1936.
After two years training his instructors labelled him “undisciplined and raw” but he was sent to join a fighter squadron, getting a new Messerschmitt 109 with a Daimler engine that was comparable to Spitfires.
After flying more than 150 missions, Oberleutnant Steinhilper was shot down by RAF pilot Bill Skinner and became a prisoner of war.
During the next six years he escaped five times from prison camps in Britain and Canada, and was classed as one of the greatest escapers of the Second World War.
His son Rolf, a university professor teaching remanufacturing in Stuttgart until his retirement two years ago, was also largely unaware of his father’s exploits during his childhood as he lived with his mother after his parents divorced.
It was only after the plane his father was shot down in was unearthed in a field near Canterbury in 1980, two years after he had retired as head of IBM in Germany, that they spoke about his war experiences.
He says: “From then on his Battle of Britain experiences had a major share in our conversations.”
The Luftwaffe ace met Mr Skinner during the filming of the Churchill’s Few documentary in 1985 and then saw the former enemy pilots as friends.
He brought Rolf with him to reunions 20 times between 1985 and 2005, and wrote a book, Spitfire On My Tail, which has been reprinted several times.
His son had a private pilot’s licence and would fly his father from Stuttgart to Biggin Hill in his Cessna 172 for these reunions. He remembers one in 1990 when the sight of the White Cliffs of Dover caused his father to panic.
Mr Steinhilper said: “We crossed the Channel, my father on the co-pilot seat being very happy to meet his former enemies very soon again and enjoying our flight, but suddenly, when the chalk rocks near Dover came in sight, my co-pilot became extremely nervous and frightened.
“First I had no idea what was wrong with him, but then I realised and said to him, ‘Papa, don’t worry! Nobody will shoot at us this time!’
“He calmed down immediately... exactly 50 years after his Channel crossings in 1940 he had still felt fear of being shot down when approaching the UK border.”
He believes his father escaped from prison camps five times not to try and rejoin the war but because he was worried about not surviving internment.
Oberleutnant Steinhilper joined IBM in 1953 as an electric typewriter salesman, coining the phrase “word processing” and rising to head the company in Germany. He died in October 2009, aged 91, leaving three children and four grandchildren.
Mr Steinhilper says: “I will be thinking of him on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, but not only on this day.”
● Churchill’s Few: The Battle Of Britain by John Willis (£18.99 Mensch Publishing). To order with free UK delivery, call Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 or go to expressbookshop. co.uk. Delivery may take up to 28 days in current circumstances.