Friday, August 5, 2022

The Calm Before the Storm

Bundesarchiv
Hauptmann Johannes Boden of Kampfgruppe 54 was of two minds. On one hand, he was no longer flying missions over England, watching his squadron mates getting shot out of the sky by the Royal Air Force, then on the other hand, here he was in his Ju-88, 6,000 meters above the Soviet Union. As he looked out he shuddered, they were a good thirty kilometers inside the USSR. That patch of haze off to his right had to be Brest-Litovsk.

He looked around the crew compartment, Oberfeldwebel Max Jürgens and Gefreiter Alois Holweck were at their guns, constantly scanning the sky. Though the Ops Officer had told them, again and again, that the Soviets were not reacting at all to overflights of their territory, he was still nervous.

The only man in the crew who seemed to take it all in stride was Feldwebel Leo Habicht. He kept studying his maps, matching what he saw there to the terrain below, and genuinely seeming to be enjoying himself. Occasionally he'd call a course change to his pilot, then return to his navigating. Boden had to admit, the man knew his business.

His new bombardier, on the other hand, was a very nervous individual. Jürgens had come to them via a Heinkel unit. After a period in a Luftwaffe "rest home." The man's nerves had been shattered when his aircraft had gone down in the Channel in late November. He had survived, none of the rest of his crew had. On top of that, it had been the second time he had been shot down.

Boden thought, "I suppose if I had been the sole survivor of my crew, I too would be a little jumpy." He still missed his old bombardier, Philip Scholl. Though the doctors had tried valiantly to save Scholl's eyesight, he had lost the sight in both of his eyes. Scholl claimed that he could see light and blurry shapes in his "good" eye. His left eye was completely blind.

"Ah, look at it this way, Johannes, I no longer have to fly over England and I have a nice pension. Things could be worse." Boden remembered Scholl saying when he'd stopped to visit him in Stuttgart on his way to Poland. Boden couldn't imagine how things could be worse. He lived to fly, take that away and they might as well kill him.

"Chef?" Boden heard over the intercom.

"Sorry, daydreaming, what is it Leo?"

"We have all the pictures we need, let's head home."

With a silent prayer of thanksgiving for another uneventful flight over Russia, Boden banked the aircraft and set a course for home.


Unteroffizier Willi Hoffmeister put his pen down and began to fold the letter to his mother. As he placed it in an envelope, leaving the envelope unsealed so that the unit censor could peruse it before it went into the post, he shook his head and sighed again.

Willi was still pissed off, he and his crew had reported to Munster, the Panzerschule to make the transition from the PzKw 38(t) to the new PzKw III H, which had a crew of five as opposed to the four men who manned the older Czech tank. He had expected to receive a new crewman. Weber would keep his job as driver, Krebs would move to gunner, freeing Willi to concentrate on commanding the tank, and Neuhäuser would move up to loader, the new guy would take over as the bow gunner/radio operator.

But on the very first day of training, the four crewmen were introduced to their new tank commander, Leutnant Hermann von Steinbrecher. Willi would no longer be commanding his own vehicle, now he would be, as Horst put it, just a gunner, down in the turret with the rest of the crew.

One of the staff at the Panzerschule, a good friend of Willi's he had known since the Polish campaign, Oberfeldwebel Otto Krämer, had come to see him.

"Willi, don't sweat it. We have lots of new officers who need jobs. Look on the bright side, your Panzer is now the platoon commander's Panzer. We need men like you to keep these kids alive so that they can learn their jobs and eventually command companies, battalions, and up." Otto had explained.

"Jesus Otto, I've commanded my own vehicle since the 1st of September in '39 when we rolled into Poland. We fought in France as well, now I'm relegated to just being a gunner."

"Someone's got to train the kids, once the Leutnant has shown he knows what he's doing, I'll let your company commander know that you want your own Panzer, deal?"

"You sure do know how to sweet talk a person, don't you Otto."

"Well, my father was a politician ..."


As the winter of 1940-1941 grinds on, the pieces are moving into place to launch the largest land campaign of the war. The Germans did routinely fly over Soviet territory on reconnaissance flights, many Soviet commanders were aghast and wanted to shoot them down, Stalin said, "No."

He had his reasons, he knew that the USSR was in no state for a fight with Hitler's Germany, he needed time to get the Red Army into shape. He had purged his military of the men he didn't trust, he needed time to let the new men, his men, learn their jobs.

Accusing the Germans of bad faith or, perish the thought, actually taking action against these overflights might provoke the Germans into attacking. The Soviets just weren't ready yet.

Time would tell.




Author's Note: As you can see, I found a way around the "I can't remember all the players" impasse I mentioned yesterday. I even offered the Muse a couple of days off and she actually refused. "What? And leave you by yourself at the keyboard? Nope, not gonna happen. I can't imagine what sort of drivel you'd write without me by your side." So, here we are, the story continues.

24 comments:

  1. This segment is a tension builder. Thank the muse for putting you to work. Something tells me Willi’s new commander is going to be a d*ck. The insight to the political dueling between Stalin and Hitler before the battles in the eastern front makes me ponder.

    Then Sarah the spammer reminds me about the 21st century and I lost my train of thought on the matter. :-(

    Thanks
    Franknbean

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    1. It was a confusing time, Stalin and Hitler both wanted to go after each other, their ideologies could not live in the same space and time. It was almost predestined to occur.

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    2. I have always believed Eastern Front turned out the way it was, was that Hitler was ready to shoot before Stalin was. It would have happened, one way or another.

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    3. Documents found after the '91 breakup showed that Stalin's attack was slated for a week after the Germans finally got their ass in gear. Ever wonder why the Germans blew through the Soviets so quickly and so far? Stalin, not trusting his Army, had them stash their weapons and gear near the border, so they wouldn't be armed until just before kickoff time. The Germans were mystified by the stockpiles they overran, but overjoyed by the lack of serious resistance until they got really far in country. The Soviets would only arm the initial army group attacking the Germans, and tell the following soldiers to look for weapons on the field. They didn't have the weapons to arm everyone after losing so much early on. Without lend-lease, the Germans might have won. Wonder how that would look if gamed?

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  2. Re Sarah the spammer, she was offering big buck jobs working from home but now that post is gone. Your technology already deleted it. Or did you get up this early on your own accord to clean that out? Hope not. Good to have more WWII fix for my early entertainment Old AF Sarge.
    Franknbean

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    1. I get up pretty early during the week. Chase the spammers away, shoot those who don't move fast enough. Blogger has broken their "this is spam" code and now the stuff gets through more often than not. Annoying it is.

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    2. Sarge,
      If you've found a way to actually shoot spammers you need to share ...
      Boat Guy

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    3. Yeah, they broke it really good… Real commenrs get relegated to the spam folder, and crap makes it into the blog.
      Worse, I can’t always even log myself in.
      (not necessarily your) Uncle Skip

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    4. BG - It's all virtual, I rather wish there was a real way to do that, it would really cut down on the number of assholes in the world.

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    5. Skip - Yes, I don't notice it much as I stay logged in. But I have seen my own comments go to spam while frigging "Sarah Elizabeth" and her "work at home" bullshit gets through more times than not.

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  3. I can imagine those "uneventful" flights which everyone hoped were uneventful but could rapidly become eventful were exhausting. There is nothing worse than having to be on your guard 24/7.

    As to Willi - having had to essentially "step back down" the career ladder, it can be annoying. Although it is also somewhat of a relief to not have to do a great deal of the administrivia that comes along with it.

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    1. That stepping down in the tank crew would be a tough thing I'd think, I can see the explained reason why but it still would not be a good day.

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    2. We'll see how Willi handles it, good NCOs know when to teach the officer and keep your ego in check. Good officers know when to listen to their NCOs and learn pretty soon which ones aren't worth listening to. Look up the German word "Steinbrecher."

      Both levels have to know their roles.

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  4. Crusty Old TV Tech here. To paraphrase a line from "Alas, Babylon", the Luftwaffe is measuring the USSR up for the "Sunday punch". Aerial photo recce is an often-forgotten aspect of air warfare, but very important. Imagine all the work that went into planning those missions, then processing the film, producing hundreds (thousands?) of copies of photos in a lab, then all the cartographic work editing maps so the Army (Heer in this case) has good, accurate maps of the to-be-invaded area. Intel types poring over blow-ups with loupes and magnifiers, looking for troop concentrations, etc. G2 reports to field commanders. Boggles the mind.

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    1. And when you think about it, the air arm started as as being just for reconnaissance, the balloons used in the Civil War, the early observation aircraft in WWI. Then someone had the idea, we ned to blind the enemy, shoot down the observation planes. Fighter aircraft evolved to attack and defend the recce birds. Eventually the recce birds became bombers, surpassing the early bombers (think zeppelins, not the Led kind) until eventually everything got faster and more deadly.

      Now satellites do the photo recon as the airspace over enemy territory has become very deadly with the advent of radar, SAMs, and all the other nastiness awaiting an unwary pilot.

      Just to know what's going on on the "other side of the hill."

      Those who know the score seldom forget the importance of photo recon.

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    2. Crusty Old TV Tech here. And satellites orbit in a precisely known trajectory (yeah, if you carry enough go-juice, you can do plane changes and stuff like that, but there is a cost), so even in 2022 there STILL is a need for air-breathing photo recce. UAV's may take some of that burden, but IMHO, I do not ever think we'll ever fully eliminate the need for a smart brain in the recce platform for some missions. Then, there is SIGINT from aerial (and space-borne) platforms...the USAAC/USAAF developed some interesting gear to make those missions happen during WW2, starting with commercial receivers and wire recorders lashed to the decks of various Allied aircraft. The Wizard War derives from your Air Arm origin observations!

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    3. Bingo! Precisely why I believe that there will always be a human in the loop.

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  5. Photo mapping is a wonder. I grew up it the time (many of us did) when a ten-mile square of wild (out west) might have an elevation line or two across it. Big clue. I'm not really complaining, I loved that countryside. But it made finding your old spots a pain in the hips and thighs from walking so far.

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    1. In my old stomping grounds the contour lines were many, sometimes close together as well!

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  6. And the Germans *had* create their own maps, the Soviet maps were intentionally distorted enough to be useless to outsiders.

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