No Luftwaffe units were worked harder during Europe's final weeks of peace
than were the cherished groups of Ju.87 Stukas, which were being
remorselessly groomed for the leading role in the war Hitler was
determined to launch against Poland. One of the more experienced Stuka
outfits, Group I of the 76th Sturzkampfgeschwader, commanded by Captain
Walter Sigel, was sent up from its usual base in Austria to Cottbus, sixty
miles southeast of Berlin, as part of the Luftwaffe's general deployment
of its strike forces toward the east. It was Sigel's pride that his was
one of the early units to be so deployed, especially since I/St.G.76 had
been handpicked for a showpiece demonstration to be held for the benefit
of the senior Luftwaffe commanders, including Generals Hugo Sperrle, Bruno
Loerzer, and Wolfram von Richthofen. Sigel's outfit was equipped with the
lastest Ju.87B's, mounting new Jumo 211D engines rated at 1,200
horsepower, nearly twice as powerful as those used in Spain. Sigel hoped
to stun the onlooking air commodores with a mass formation diving attack
of the entire group, twenty-seven aircraft in all. He succeeded, but in a
way nobody could have dreamed of.
The demonstration was scheduled for the morning of August 15 [1939].
The hour chosen, six [a.m.], was undoubtedly selected for the dramatic
postsunrise effect it would offer. Just prior to the scheduled takeoff
time, a weather reconnaissance plane landed at Cottbus with a report on
conditions over the strike area, a wooded section of Silesia near
Neuhammer-am-Queis, thirty minutes' flight time away. Conditions were far
from ideal. The weather pilot told Captain Sigel that it was clear above
6000 feet, but below he would find seven-tenths cloud cover all the way
down to 2500 feet. Below that, however, visibility was good. This meant
that Sigel would have to trust finding a hole in the clouds over the
strike area, lead his group down through the murk, and and break into the
clear with about five seconds left to line up on the target, release
bombs, and pull out. As group commander, Sigel had three choices: to
request postponement of the strike until the weather was clear all the way
down, to ask that the exercise be scrubbed, or to carry on as planned.
Since Sigel was a German officer, and since a galaxy of fearsome Luftwaffe
generals were gathering to personally witness I/St.G.76's star turn, only
the last option was thinkable. Shortly after 5:30am, Sigel led his group
off the field at Cottbus.
Once Sigel left the ground, he was in constant radio communication with
the twenty-six other Stukas forming up in squadron strength behind him,
but there was no radio link between his airborne group and the strike area
at Neuhammer. Thus he could not know of the disaster in the making.
Between the time the weather plane had surveyed the area and returned to
Cottbus and the time Sigel's group neared the strike zone, early morning
ground fog formed into an opaque white blanket covering almost the entire
area, rising in places to merge with the fringes of cloud. No more
dangerous weather conditions for a dive-bombing attack could have been
created.
Sigel, with his Stukas arrayed behind him, approached Neuhammer at an
altitude of 12,000 feet, estimating his position by dead reckoning and
upon checkpoints which were in the clear on the flight out from Cottbus.
Above, a pale blue windowpane sky; below, a sea of rolling clouds tinged
with red. The generals were waiting. Sigel rolled the Stuka on its back
and shoved the stick forward. The altimeter needle began unwinding in a
futile race to keep up with the altitude that was being eaten away at the
rate of 375 feet per second. Sigel's bomber plunged into the dirty gray
wet muck at a dive angle of seventy degrees doing nearly 300 miles per
hour. Closed in by the white world about him, his eyes straining to see
past the mist being churned by the prop, Sigel felt time drag. By now,
the entire group, echeloned out on his wings, were hurtling through the
clouds with him. Where was the clear air promised by the weather pilot?
Any instant now...
Then the horrified Sigel saw not two thousand feet of clear space, but a
limitless canopy of trees rushing toward him. Already tensed to the
breaking point, his reactions were instantaneous. He screamed a warning
to the others and slammed the stick back. Through the blur of a grayout,
Sigel saw that he missed death by a matter of feet; the Stuka was zipping
through a firebreak below the treetops. His warning came too late for
the two dive-bombers riding his tail. They plunged into the earth, sirens
wailing, and exploded -- as did all nine Stukas of the second wave. The
high squadron's Ju.87's convulsively came out of their dives, but two of
them stalled out and smashed into the trees to join the eleven others.
Fragments of metal and flesh were scattered across a wide area, and fires
started in the summer-dry secondary undergrowth. Plumes of smoke, pyres
for the twenty-six airmen who had died before breakfast, rose lazily into
the air, blending with the fog that began to dissipate not long
afterwards.
The tragedy at Neuhammer, worst of its kind in the recorded history of
aviation, was kept secret for a long time afterward. OKL was notified
immediately, of course, as was the Fuhrer. One account has it that when
Hitler was given the news, he "stared speechlessly out of the window for
ten minutes." The reaction is believable; Hitler was a mystic, a believer
in astrology, and the wiping out of thirteen of his vaunted Stukas at one
stroke was surely an omen. His war against Poland, in which the Luftwaffe
was counted on to play a decisive role, was scheduled to begin sixteen
days later.
The Neuhammer Stuka disaster of 1939
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Originally Posted by JCR
