Nachtjagd (night hunt): The Bf 110 at Work
We do not hate the British or the Americans; these boys are doing their duty just as we are. Neither side can change the political situation, so we have to carry on with our job to prevent as many Allied bombers as possible from destroying our cities and killing our people.
The first RAF pathfinders are dropping their target indicators. We see cascades of red, green and white flares marking the aiming point. They light up the area and descend slowly on little parachutes. We call them Christbäume (Christmas trees). From now on, it doesn’t take long for the terrible spectacle to begin! Thirty miles away, we can see the first explosions on the ground in Hamburg, and they’re followed by widespread fires. These eventually combine into one enormous fire that covers entire suburbs with a disastrous firestorm. The updraft brings wind velocities of 120mph, and the firestorm consumes everything in its path; there is no chance at all!
Soon, we see the first kills by night fighters and flak: Lancasters, Halifaxes and our own comrades go down as orange-colored torches, descending in steep dives to explode on impact with the ground. We see parachutes of the lucky men who manage to bail out; there are not many! Searchlights move all over the night sky, looking like pale arms of an octopus in search of prey. In addition, explosions of antiaircraft shells at all altitudes make life difficult for friend and foe! Over the city are many aircraft from both sides, and there are collisions.
Altogether, it is an inferno—hell for everybody. We night fighters can easily be seen by enemy bombers’ gunners and by the marauding British night fighters, and we are hit by our own flak. We have to be cautious to avoid colliding with other aircraft, as all around us are at least 50 to 80 four-engine bombers and a similar number of night fighters. Bombs, incendiaries and target indicators fall between us. The fires send up their light to 20,000 feet. It is as bright as day; you could read a newspaper! The smell of smoke fills our cockpit.
While the raid is in full swing, I see a Halifax and follow it into the darkness. I slowly close into position under it so I can use my Schräge Musik: two, upward-firing 20mm MG/FF upward-firing cannon. I am almost in firing position when a nearby aircraft catches fire and lights up the sky—for me, a dangerous situation, so I quickly move to the darker side and wait. After a couple of minutes, I close in again and aim between its two port engines where the fuel tanks are. A short burst of cannon fire causes a small bluish
Dr. Rolf Ebhardt, who flew combat in the Bf 110G-4 with 8./NJG 1 during WW II takes us aboard for a night mission.
forced the conversation back to his Bf 110 experiences, he usually deflected the question, speaking with genuine appreciation about the courage and dedication of the rear gunners, the mechanics, and the primitive conditions under which they often lived.
His diffidence may have stemmed from the fact that the Luftwaffe hierarchy was badly split over night-fighter tactics. General der Nachtjagdflieger Josef Kammhuber was successful using radar and ground-controlled intercept stations. As British defenses improved and the scale of their attacks increased, this was augmented by the Wilde Sau system created by the maverick Major Hajo Hermann. In the Wilde Sau system, standard day fighters such as Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke Wulf Fw 190s were employed as “freelance” fighters. Both Kammhuber and Hermann were beset by chronic shortages of equipment and unrealistic expectations of success. As a result, recriminations were the rule, and this may have affected Mutke’s attitude.
On to jets and Mach 1 … maybe
As restrained as he was about his “Kleber-Flying,” Guido was joyously outspoken about the two major events of his career. The first of these came after his transfer to jet fighter training at III/ Ergänzungs-Jagdgeschwader 2 (EJG 2) commanded by the 220 victory ace, Oberleutnant Heinrich Bär. (Bär would ultimately become one of the top Me 262 aces, with 16 victories in the aircraft.) The 262 was naturally in short supply and Mutke remembered, “Bär would shake my hand before every takeoff and make me promise not to damage the aircraft.” Despite there being only four days of class instruction, with some practical demonstrations of starting and operating the engines, the first takeoff was of course a solo. Mutke had no problem flying the plane, but lamented the Me 262’s obvious difficulties stemming from being rushed into combat without adequate testing.
On April 9, 1945, after another sincere handshake from Bär, Mutke took off from Lechfeld for a final training flight. He was at 12,000 meters (roughly 36,000 feet) with his radio tuned into the base. Suddenly, he heard Bär calling out a warning to another 262
pilot that he was about to be attacked by an American P-51.
Mutke had been waiting for this call to combat and told me, “With the engines at full throttle, I pushed over into a steep dive. The 262 picked up speed quickly and it began to vibrate. At about 11,000 meters, the airspeed indicator showed that I had passed the red line of 950 km/h and the needle was stuck at the limit, 1,100 km/h. Suddenly, the aircraft shook violently, obviously out of control. I moved the stick wildly around the cockpit. For a brief moment, the airplane responded to controls again momentarily, then went back out of control. The plane still did not respond to pressure on the stick so I changed the incidence of the tailplane. The speed dropped, the aircraft stopped shaking, and I regained control.” (Perhaps not coincidentally, a variable tailplane proved to be essential to the Bell XS-1.)
The engines flamed out and Mutke waited until a lower altitude and airspeed to restart them, never a certain process in the 262. He made a cautious landing at home base, only to find Bär waiting for him. It was obvious that the aircraft was badly damaged, with the wings bent and lots of rivets missing. Bär immediately accused him of having flown past the red line limit of 950 km/h. Mutke, realizing that he had broken the “hand-shake code,” did what any fighter pilot would do—he lied, saying that he done nothing other than standard maneuvers.
A revelation, then a resolve, then skepticism
At the time, Mutke had no notion of the “sound barrier” and certainly no idea of the importance of breaking it. Chuck Yeager’s celebrated 1947 flight in the Bell XS-1 was well known, but it was not until 1989 when Mutke listened to a lecture on how the sound barrier was broken that he realized he may have been the first to have broken it. Hearing the sequence of events that occurred jolted Mutke, for he remembered that it was exactly what had transpired on his April 9, 1945 flight in the Me 262.
He moved rapidly from a perception to a full-fledged campaign, in which he proved to his satisfaction that he had in fact flown through the sound barrier, reaching a speed of 1,200 km/h. He buttressed his arguments with a quote from the “Me 262 A-1 Pilot’s Handbook” issued by Headquarters, Air Materiel Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, on January 10, 1946. It said that “Speeds of 950 km/h (590 mph) are reported to have been attained in a shallow dive 20° to 30° from the horizontal. No vertical dives were made. At speeds of 950 to 1,000 km/h (590 to 620mph) the air flow around the aircraft reaches the speed of sound, and it is reported that the control surfaces no longer affect the direction of flight. The results vary with different airplanes: some wing over and dive while others dive gradually. It is also reported that once the speed of sound is exceeded, this condition disappears and normal control is restored.”
Mutke seized upon this and other arguments to claim that he had been the first person to break the sound barrier and survive—knowing that there had been many mysterious losses of 262s, and that some of them may have been from incidents similar to his.
Many people were skeptical of his claim, but this never deterred him. Expert opinion from German and British sources seemed to prove that the 262 could reach only Mach .86 before going violently out of control. Yet his battle was given new life in 1999 by a study at the Munich Technical University which indicated that the Me 262 could in fact exceed Mach 1.
Mutke went to his grave in 2004, believing that he was the first man to exceed the speed of sound and live. Most experts doubt his claim, and all agree that without knowing the exact altitude, speed, and temperature at which the incident occurred, it is impossible to prove or disprove the event.
HEARING THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS THAT OCCURRED AS THE SOUND BARRIER WAS BROKEN JOLTED MUTKE, FOR HE REMEMBERED THAT IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT HAD TRANSPIRED ON HIS APRIL 9, 1945 FLIGHT IN THE ME 262.
But … that’s MY Messerschmitt
There was a certain irony in support having coming from Munich, for Mutke was periodically engaged in lawsuits with the great Deutsches Museum there. These lawsuits resulted from his last flight in a Me 262. The war was obviously winding down, but jet fighters were still a precious asset and Mutke was asked by Oberleutnant
Bär to pick up a repaired aircraft from a forest clearing three miles away from Fürstenfeldbruck. He was to fly it to Bad Aibling, were JG7 was being relocated.
After spending two days getting the aircraft ready, Mutke’s Me 262 was being fueled for takeoff when the area was hit by a swarm of Martin B-26 Marauders. Mutke told the ground crew to stop the fueling and took off, knowing that he was a sitting duck on the ground for any escorting P-51s.
It was April 25, 1945, and the war was grinding to an end, but Mutke set out to find and engage the Marauder formation. When he checked his fuel, he found that he no longer had enough to reach his destination. He made a quick analysis of the situation and decided it would be better to land in neutral Switzerland than to bail out, with all the hazards entailed, over territory now occupied by the French.
Worried about the always vigilant and aggressive Swiss defenses, he landed at the first airport he saw, Dubendorf. The Swiss authorities thoroughly ground tested the aircraft and confirmed that Mutke’s tanks were empty when he landed. The aircraft was returned to Germany in 1957. It occurred to Mutke that because the former owners of his jet, the Nazi government, no longer existed, that he had title to the airplane. For some incomprehensible reason, the German government in Bonn did not agree.
On with life
Resilient as always, Mutke continued to combine flying and medicine in his postwar career. He published a report on the Me 262 in the January 1, 1946 issue of the Swiss journal Flug-Wehr-Technik, the first appreciation the general public had of the aircraft’s performance. He flew as a Captain on DC-3s in South America, working for Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano. Washing dishes, he completed his medical studies in Switzerland, eventually receiving a doctorate from the University of Munich gynecological hospital.
As one of the world’s top gynecologists, Dr. Mutke presented papers at distinguished forums around the world. He became an early expert on the effects of space flight upon women. His interests initially involved the differences between men and women that weightlessness or long duration space flight might have. They soon involved aspects of the distant future, considering such things as conception, pregnancy, and childbirth in a space environment. With the combination of his fame in medicine, his claim to have broken the sound barrier in his Me 262 and his sense of entitlement to Weisse 3 in the Deutsches Museum, it might seem that Dr. Mutke had a full plate.
Such was not the case; he continued to enjoy private flying as a means of personal transport in Europe. He was also determined to become one of the lucky people who would get to fly one of the brand-new Me 262s then being created by Herb Tischler in Fort Worth.
Sadly, this did not come about, for it would have been a fitting achievement for a man who accomplished much—and yearned to do more.