Innehållsförteckning för Issue 22 från Iron Cross

‘28 October 1939, He 111 H-2, Wn. 5449, IH+JA, Stab./KG26 Long Newton Farm, Humbie, Edinburgh, 11.15 hrs. This crew took off from Lübeck-Blankensee, on their first war flight to photograph the Firth of Forth, but due to cloud cover the crew proceeded to the west before returning to the original objective where they were fired on by AA at 15,000 ft and hit almost immediately in the wireless operator’s compartment. The pilot then dived the aircraft to 6,000 ft. Shortly after they were attacked by two [sic.]* Spitfires that wounded the pilot, shattered the cockpit instruments, and killed both rear gunners but the pilot managed to make a good landing. No bombs were carried. • Markings: shield, a side view of a sitting lion.• The rubber dinghy was carried in…

It was in the Highlands of Scotland where Josef Gabčík, Jan Kubiš, and other members of the Czechoslovak Army honed their skills, not knowing exactly what they were training for but hoping they would have the chance to strike at those who had invaded their homeland. Under instruction from the Special Operations Executive, they learned how to use explosives, how to de-rail trains – and, under the tutorship of Captain Bill Sykes, how to kill silently using his famous commando knife. The course lasted four weeks, after which they were sent down to RAF Ringway for a further two weeks for parachute training. On 27 September 1941, the Czech Press Agency released the news that Reich Protector Konstantin von Neurath was being replaced by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. The latter had…

Within the German two-seater flying fraternity of 1914 – 1918 there were a few two-seater crews who achieved victories over Allied aeroplanes and balloons. Of these, three of the most successful were, Albert Dossenbach and Hans Schilling, Johann Baur and Georg Hengl, and Friedrich Huffzky and Gottfried Ehmann. Of these, Dossenbach is perhaps the most well-known, but this is because he was awarded the Pour le Mérite (the ‘Blue Max’) and because he also became a single seat ace as well. Albert Dossenbach was born in St. Blasien in the southern region of the Black Forest on 5 June 1891, the son of an innkeeper. Having no wish to follow in his father’sfootsteps, he became a medical student, although with the looming threat of a one year stretch of compulsory…

Within the Wehrmacht, the Heer Pioniere (Army Combat Enginers) performed a variety of tasks in difficult and hazardous situations which ranged from the laying and clearing of minefields, erecting bridges, clearing obstacles, blowing up bunkers, and crossing rivers. To help them in their work they used several types of Gepanzerte Pionier-Fahrzeug (Armoured Combat Engineering Vehicles). These often had to perform tasks whilst under fire and thus an ability to use remote control vehicles for some of these tasks was a welcome development by the troops. That ability came with the introduction of a Leichte Ladungstraeger (light explosive charge load carrier) which was given the name Goliath. Given the diminutive size of the German army’s Goliath, however, one is tempted to draw the conclusion that somebody in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht…

On 5 May 1945, six experienced pilots assembled at an airfield near Salzburg preparing to fly a group of Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz biplane trainers. But this was no training exercise. A hastily concocted plan called for the aircraft to cross the Alps, dive to low altitude and head for the Allied bomber airfields in northern Italy where the crews would crash-land and attempt to destroy or disable as many B-17s and B-24s as possible. Poor weather postponed the foolhardy venture until the following day when their seemingly flimsy, open-cockpit machines took off and headed towards Franconia at tree-top height. In stunned disbelief, Allied AA gunners were so surprised that they failed to hit any of the slow-flying trainers, but fortunately for the pilots involved, the fuel tanks ran dry…

Known as the Scourge of the Atlantic, the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condors from Kampfgeschwader 40 had a relatively successful war over the eastern Atlantic until late 1941. So successful were they that by September 1941, seven pilots from I./KG 40 had been awarded the Ritterkreuz for attacks on shipping. One of those was Hans Buchholz. Hans Buchholz was born near Potsdam on 28 July 1908 and joined the Reichsmarine in April 1929, but five years later he transferred to the Luftwaffe and began flying training training. By the outbreak of war, a qualified pilot, he had reached the rank of Oberfeldwebel and would go on to join I./KG 40. In September 1939, Hauptmann Edgar Petersen was on temporary attachment to General zur besonderen Verwendung der Luftflotte 2, Generalleutnant Hans Geisler,…

Although the first air attack on targets within the British Isles was the raid conducted against naval shipping in the Firth of Forth on 16 October 1939, the first German bombs of the Second World War to actually explode on British soil fell at Sullom in the Shetlands at 13.00 hours on Monday 13 November 1939. In this incident, four bombs fell harmlessly on farmland, with the British news media seeing an opportunity to pronounce how risibly ineffective German bombs were. To illustrate the un-threatening nature of Luftwaffe attacks, the newspaper photographer pictured a local man, John Halcrow, standing in one of the bomb craters holding a dead rabbit - supposedly the only casualty. In fact, the ‘casualty’ was a rabbit purchased from a local butcher and simply used for…

When the editor wandered around the showground of the excellent ‘We Have Ways’ history festival* near Silverstone in July of this year, he was astonished to find displayed on an exhibition stand an example of the Luftwaffe aircraft grenade launcher, or Stoerkoerperausruestungen (literally: nuisance body equipment), which was featured in the magazine in 2022. Quite likely, it is the only surviving example of a very unusual piece of equipment. So far as it is possible to ascertain, the RAF first became aware of the fitment of the grenade launcher in April 1941, this in the aftermath of the loss of a a Heinkel 111 H-5 of 9/KG76 brought down at Bendish House, Whitwell, Hertfordshire, on the night of 8/9 April whilst en-route to attack Coventry. As was usual in the…

When a defeated force departs any territory it once held, then it is common practice to destroy or disable military equipment that might be useful to the enemy or that may perhaps reveal useful intelligence to the foe. In the case of serviceable or usable equipment that could reasonably be evacuated in a retreat, then such materiel would be taken away by the withdrawing forces for further use. However, logistics would frequently prevent any such removal of equipment. A case in point, of course, being the withdrawal of the BEF and Allied forces from Dunkirk in 1940. In the case of aircraft that were still operational, and if a ‘friendly’ base were within range, then flying these aircraft out and to safety was always an option. However, this was dependent…

AN ATLAS OF GERMAN ARMY SITUATION MAPS Kevin Boylan Publisher: Osprey Publishing Web: www.ospreypublishing.com ISBN: 978-1-4728-4392-0 Hardback: 256 pages RRP: £45.00 A vital key to properly understanding military actions and battles from history rests on an ability to access situational maps of such campaigns etc. and to use these to follow individual elements, thus illustrating how such events unfolded. Merely reading about a military unit moving from ‘A’ to ‘B’, and reading text which describes the relative positions of both attackers and defenders, does not readily provide any proper insight as to the reality of what was happening, or where it was happening. To fully conceptualise any military actions in a written text, access to supporting cartographic material is essential to visualise what was happening and, geographically, where it was…

German airships dropped about 196 tons of bombs on Britain during the war, causing damage estimated at the time at £1,527,585, while killing 557 people and injuring 1,358. Aeroplanes — Gothas, ‘Giants’, and various seaplanes and other landplanes — added another 73 tons, which inflicted further damage estimated at £1,434,526, and killed 857 while injuring another 2,058. This first aerial war over Britain ended without breaking the morale of the people, but it had resulted in traumatic scenes played out across the country as bombs reduced homes to shattered piles of smoking rubble, killing, maiming and mutilating their occupants, from the tiniest baby to the elderly who had been born years before an aeroplane had even flown. The face of war had changed irrevocably – aerial warfare and the opening…

Experiments with semi-automatic rifles had been carried out long before the First World War, although most of the developments at that time were unsuccessful with almost all the designs suffering from complicated and unreliable mechanics. One of the first truly pioneering designs, however, was presented by Paul Mauser in 1898. His C98 model was a recoil operated weapon with a short barrel recoil, an integrated box magazine, and a breech lock activated by two flappers. Flapper locking is a type of locking mechanism that involves a pair of flappers on the sides of the bolt that each lock into an outwards recess in the receiver. As the bolt is forced backwards after the firing of a cartridge, the flappers recede back into the bolt, therefore unlocking and sending the bolt…

At 09.15 hrs on the morning of Saturday 28 October 1939, the three Spitfires of Red Section, 603 Squadron, got airborne from RAF Turnhouse for a routine patrol at 14,000 ft over the River Forth whilst, at around the same time, the three Spitfires of Red Section, 602 Squadron, were patrolling over RAF Turnhouse. Already, and in a little over one month of war, Luftwaffe raiders had operated against targets in and around Scotland and the very north of England, with 602 and 603 Squadrons claiming victories over the North Sea against Junkers 88s and a Heinkel 111 on 16 and 22 October respectively. Operating at long range over the North Sea from their base at Lübeck-Blankensee near the Danish/German border, the raids were clearly risky for the aircraft of…

For bombing use, modifications to Lorenz blind landing system were fairly easy to implement. However, large antennae were needed to provide the required accuracy but enabled simple switching of two of the reflector elements to alter beam directions very marginally. The beam angles were so dramatically reduced that it was only a few tens of yards wide over the target. The system’s code name, Knickebein, means ‘crooked leg’, and although this has often been associated with the two beams where they crossed (and provided Professor R V Jones with a clue as to what Knickebein might be), the term actually applied to the shape of the transmitter aerial array rather than the crossing beams. The word is also the name of a magical raven in Germanic mythology and may have…

Although the Wehrmacht relied heavily on horses during the Second World War (as, indeed, did the armies of Imperial Germany during the First World War) it also relied upon horsepower of another kind between 1939 and 1945. That is, the horsepower delivered via motorcycles such as the Zündapp K 800 W motorcycles seen here in France during 1940. Founded at the height of the First World War to manufacture armaments, The Zündapp company found itself a new peacetime role, post-war, as a producer of motorcycles under the direction of its new owner, Dr Fritz Neumeyer. The company built its first machine, a Levis-powered two-stroke in 1921, but the firm began making its own engines in 1924. In that year, it sold more than 10,000 machines, and at the Berlin Motor…

Just like the Allied armies of 1914 – 18, the military forces of Imperial Germany buried their dead at multiple locations across the battlefields of Europe. In many cases, these were simple field graves where a casualty – or multiple casualties – might have been laid to rest by their comrades close to where they fell. Often, these were in remote fields or woodland, while in other instances small cemeteries might be created for casualties who might well have been from larger engagements or of those who died of wounds at nearby field dressing stations or hospitals. Meanwhile, others were interred in municipal cemeteries or churchyards. Into this latter category fall the First World War burials of German soldiers at Vladslo, Belgium. Today, Vladslo is a quiet village which is…

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Few objects symbolise national power and prestige more than a mighty warship. Even today, in a world dominated by stealth aircraft and precision-guided missiles, the arrival of an aircraft carrier in any harbour attracts huge interest. In the 1930s, no country could be considered a major international player if it did not possess a flotilla of mighty warships. After much of Germany’s Imperial Fleet was scuttled into the cold waters of Scapa Flow in 1919, the Reichsmarine was limited by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to six pre-Dreadnought battleships and a handful of cruisers and a few other smaller vessels. If Germany was again to be counted amongst the great military nations of the world, she needed a mighty navy. However, tensions between Germany and Poland after the…

Publisher: The Great War Aviation Society Web: https://greatwaraviation.org/shop Price: £12.50 including postage in UK. Overseas, £17.00 including postage – excluding Europe. (Note: the society are currently unable to offer the product to EU countries) Although the New Year seems a long way away, it will come round soon enough! And everyone needs to consider important things like calendars for 2025. Especially when they are striking as this example! At Iron Cross magazine we are again pleased to support our friends at The Great War Aviation Society by reviewing their 2025 artwork calendar. As ever, it is a truly lovely piece of work which utilises the talented artwork of twelve different aviation artists who showcase their skills across each month of the year. Many of the aircraft depicted are those of…

THE SANKE CARDS During the First World War, Berlin-based Willi Sanke published a series of about 700 numbered photo-postcards, showing Germany’s leading aviators. His postcards of national heroes were enthusiastically purchased by the civilian population and are highly collectable today. We tell the story of the Sanke cards. (1) LAST APPEAL TO REASON On 16 July 1940, Hitler signed off Führer Directive No.16: ‘Preparations for a landing operation against England’. Three days later, through his ‘Last Appeal to Reason’, Hitler offered Churchill one final opportunity to end the fighting. (2) ‘A STUPID SIGNAL’ The story of the loss of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941 is one that is well-known, but less well-known are the stories of the relatively few survivors from the ship’s sinking. We look at Bismarck’s…

When Norway was invaded and occupied by German troops in April 1940, it saw the beginning of a traumatic five years under Nazi rule and, like all countries occupied by forces of the Third Reich, Norway would see its own share of traitors and collaborators. Prominent among that band of those willing to betray their own country and its peoples was the notorious Norwegian politician, Vidkun Quisling, who ran a puppet government approved by the Nazi regime. In this dramatic photograph taken by Johannes Stage on 11 May 1945, a Norweigian Resistance leader, Terje Rollem, is saluted by the German commandant of the Akershus Fortress in Oslo, Major Josef Nichterlein, the latter accompanied by his aide, Hauptmann Hamel. For a while, Nichterlein was interned in a POW camp near Skien…