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Ace's Death
Author: Summer Night (Author of "Air Battle on the Western Front: A History of the 26th Fighter Wing of the Luftwaffe in World War II", "Sunset on the Empire: Witnessing the Last Moments of the German Army", "Brave Man - Seeing World War II through the Eyes of First-Line Soldiers", etc. ）
In addition to the familiar Hartmann, Buckhorn, Novatney, Garland, Marceau and others, Emil Lang, although he failed to rank in the first echelon, was also a great achievement, claiming to shoot down 173 enemy aircraft and adding a Knight's Cross on oak leaves. His flying career lasted from Lufthansa to the Luftwaffe, and it is said that he never had an accident, let alone been hit by an enemy. But there was an end to his luck, and he died in the final year of the war with the rout of the Luftwaffe, as many of his colleagues did. This is a typical fighter pilot's ending, but because of the fierceness and chaos of the war, his death is particularly confusing and foggy, and who ended Emil Lang, a German ace pilot with an impressive record of 173 aircraft, is still in disagreement. What this article wants to present is the mysterious and strange event, combined with the german, American, and British three-way archives, to sort out and restore the battle scene of that year to the greatest extent.
Emile Lang (14 January 1909 – 3 September 1944) was a Luftwaffe recipient of the Knight's Cross in Oak Leaves. In 403 combat missions, he claimed to have annihilated 173 enemy aircraft, 144 on the Middle East and 29 on the Western Front (9 Spitfire, 9 P-51 Mustang, 6 P-47 Raiden, and 4 P-38 Lightning fighters), and he also set a record for the highest single-day crash in air combat history by claiming to shoot down 18 Soviet aircraft on November 3, 1943.
First, defeat Normandy
Compared with young talents such as Hartmann, Lang Daqi's late growth experience and career are more representative of the Luftwaffe. He was an early track and field athlete and civil aviation pilot, joined the army in 1939, transferred from the transport aircraft unit to the fighter unit three years later, and joined the famous 54th Fighter Wing "Green Heart" Wing in 1943, when he was 34 years old, which was an advanced age for fighter pilots with extremely high physical requirements. However, his early career brought him excellent physical fitness and rich flying skills, Lang's progress in the vast battlefield of the Eastern Front, which was in full swing, reached the 100-plane mark at the end of that year, and on November 3, 1943, especially his highlight moment, he went out four times, claiming to shoot down a total of 18 Soviet aircraft (nine Il-2 strikers, three La-5 fighters, two Yak-9 fighters, three Yak-7 fighters, and one other unknown model), breaking the "Star of Africa" a year ago. Marceu set a single-day crash record, which remains to this day as large-scale air combat has become history.
On 6 June 1944, the Battle of Normandy began, and the Luftwaffe's main task in Normandy was to support the Army against the RAF's Second Tactical Air Force and the US Army's Ninth Air Force. At the end of the month, Captain Emil Long, who had accumulated 159 aircraft, was transferred to the 26th Fighter Wing (JG 26) as the commander of the Second Brigade. The JG 26th Wing was the Luftwaffe's veteran force on the Western Front, having been fighting the British and American Allies since the outbreak of World War II, and was once the most feared opponent of the Allied Air Force. After serving as captain of JG 54 for nearly a year, Lang did not live up to this hard-won promotion, full of energy, and continued his strong momentum from the eastern front to the western front, achieving a total of 28 air combat records from June 6 to the end of August, dominating the Normandy battlefield.
However, the Luftwaffe had a huge disparity in strength, lost air superiority, and could only be passively beaten, supported bitterly, covered the ground troops and fought and retreated, even if there were ace pilots like Emile Lang who could achieve beautiful results, but it did not help the battle situation, and the majority of ordinary pilots became the target of hunting by opponents, and the Luftwaffe also suffered heavy and irreparable casualties. Beginning in late August, the German general trend had gone, and the JG 26th Wing gradually withdrew from France, and at the end of the month temporarily withdrew to the vicinity of Brussels, Belgium, with the first brigade stationed at Helienbergen Airport and the second brigade stationed at Melsbroeck Airport.
On 2 September, British armoured forces approached the city of Brussels. At noon the next day, JG 26 again retreated towards the German mainland, and the second team went to Kichheran via Düsseldorf, most of the transition was uneventful, but the consequences of the few losses were disastrous.
At about 13:00, the 2nd Squadron of the First Squadron, which had left Herringbergen at the latest, set off, when the clouds were thick and the visibility in the air was poor, and 8 Fw 190th takeoffs took off, turning gently from west to east and climbing to 1500 meters. Less than two weeks into the wing, Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Ossenkop took off as Corporal Düsin's wingman platoon, and when he found that the landing gear could not be recovered, he turned to the south end of the airport and checked the landing gear retractor with great difficulty. The "Mustang" of the 38th Squadron of the 55th Fighter Group of the US Army suddenly rushed out from 200 meters above, the Fw 190 had no power to fight back, and the four-aircraft squad led by Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Kempf (with a total record of 65 aircraft) was immediately annihilated, only one person survived the parachute with a shot in the leg, including Kempf, and the other three were killed in the aircraft.
Seeing that the situation was not good, Osenkob dodged to the left with force and lowered his flaps to land quickly. Four friendly planes crashed in front of his eyes, and fireworks and loud noises took off in the east 3 kilometers away. The U.S. military then strafed the airfield before it flew away. Ossenkopp slid into the Hangar of The 2nd Squadron under the noses of the 2 "Mustangs", stopped and hurriedly pulled up the head of the airport field maintenance team and three soldiers, and drove to the crash site, where they rescued a comrade who had survived a parachute but was seriously injured.
Back at the airport, Ossenkow learned from the ground staff that his plane was fine, and that the landing gear could not be put away properly because his circuit breaker was loosened during the slide-and-run phase, otherwise he would have been the first target of the Mustang, and later Ossenkoram gladly laughed at himself that "ignorance and strangeness saved me a small life and 1 Fw 190A-8".
As the P-38 Group with the oldest history of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, the 55th Fighter Group has met and fought with the JG 26 Narrow Road many times in the past year, and the two sides have won and lost each other, which can be described as a narrow road, the group has just recently changed from the P-38 to the P-51D Mustang fighter, escorted the bombers to bomb Ludwigshafen on the morning of September 3, and returned to the vicinity of Chalons in France at 12:35 when the two squadrons withdrew from escort and went to Belgium to sweep ground targets. At 13:00, Captain Macaulay Clarke of the 38th Fighter Squadron Hellcat spotted more than 10 enemy aircraft operating at a low altitude of 3,000, reported to the squadron leader and led his squad down, with the squadron leader leading another squad to follow. The Mustang swooped down to Herrenbergen Airport at a high speed of 650 km/h, slowed down, cleared the cockpit cover frost, and came to the unconscious 2./JG 26 Squadron, Clark approached an Fw 190 flying on the left rear of the team on the north side of the airport, taking the lead, and several other Fw 190s tried to fight back, but were then solved by Clark's squad and the squadron leader shot down the 4th.
Captain Macaulay Clark watched with satisfaction as his Tennessee Beauty P-51 fighter was added the 5th victory mark. Clark was believed to have shot down Kempf of JG 26.
Ii. The death of Emil Lang and the German and American troops
At Melsbruck Airport, 10 kilometres away, Emile Long was also flying with his second brigade headquarters, and they also encountered a landing gear failure, which resulted in a disaster. The post-war history of the wing, coroner Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Prille, who was the wing commander at the time, chronicles this process:
On the 3rd, due to malfunction, the three planes of the Second Brigade Headquarters postponed their final departure until 13:20. As two companions of the captain, Lieutenant Alfred Gross served as Emile Long's wingman for many years, following from JG 54 to JG 26, and Corporal Hans-Joachim Borreck was a budding newcomer.
Shortly after takeoff, Lang sensed a landing gear failure, but ten minutes later they were still at an altitude of 200 meters into the course, when Boreck called for "lightning" in the rear, Lang climbed to the upper left to avoid, Gross evaded to the right, Boreck was pursued by two enemy aircraft, could only dodge downwards, soon his wings and engines were shot, the grease cover filled the canopy, Borek turned sharply to the left, slightly throwing away the pursuers. Obstructed in sight, he only saw the captain's landline heading toward the ground, and the landing gear had not yet been recovered.
Boreck landed at another airport. Gross was badly wounded, filled out a combat report at the hospital, stated that he had dodged the first round of attacks, counterattacked and shot down a Spitfire, and he finally saw Lang's Fw190 burning and rushing to the ground, then jumping sharply. Gross was shot down unaware and parachuted to escape. The Knight's Cross recipient, who had 52 destroyer shot down, left the team less than a month after entering JG 26, claiming that the Downed Spitfire failed to be confirmed by the military.
There are many doubts and contradictions in the reports of Corporal Borek and Lieutenant Gross, whether it is "lightning" or "spitfire" that attacked them? There were no P-47 units in the Brussels area that had engaged the Fw 190, which could eliminate the existence of "lightning". A young corporal panicked and confessed that he had mistaken the enemy plane. Coincidentally, the Mustang of the U.S. 338th Fighter Squadron and the Spitfire of the British 41st Squadron both claimed to have attacked three Fw 190s at about the same time and place, so who shot down Emile Lang, the German ace pilot with an impressive record of 173 fighters, there are two theories: Darrell Cramer of the US 338th Fighter Squadron and Captain Terry of the British 41st Squadron Spencer）
The 338th Fighter Squadron "Oak Fruit" and the 38th Fighter Squadron "Hellcat" belonged to the US 55th Fighter Group, and after completing the escort on the same day, one after the other flew to Belgium at an altitude of 2700 meters to sweep. The 38 squadron in the front called near Brussels with the Fw 190 operating at low altitudes – as mentioned earlier, it attacked squadron 2./JG 26 in Herimbergen. Major John McGinn also led the 338th Squadron to dive through the clouds at an altitude of 900 meters, and when he saw "3 or 6 enemy planes jumping out of the ground and flying east in a loose formation," he and his wingman, Lieutenant Darrell Cramer, swept past the enemy aircraft formation, left and right. At 13:00 McGinn aimed at the Fw 190 in the right rear of the opposing side, And at 13:20, Lieutenant Cramer shot down the second Fw 190 northeast of Brussels, and 10 minutes later their teammate, Lieutenant Hermann Schonenberg, also hit an Fw 190, causing it to dive from a low altitude of 30 meters, but did not see the other side crash. Lieutenant Cramer's battle report states:
The other side was not fast, and with a lot of kinetic energy accumulated during the dive, I approached at high speed, and the Fw 190, which turned sharply to the left, began to turn right, and suddenly rushed out of my right side of another P-51, passed between me and the enemy aircraft, fired and disengaged downwards, but it was too fast, and the Fw 190 was in a sharp turn, and his bullets were fired.
As I continued to approach, the Fw190 was still sharply turning to the right, increasing my firing deflection angle, so I turned slightly to the left, widened the distance and reduced the deflection angle, and then turned sharply to the right, firing at a deflection angle of 75 degrees and a distance of about 300 yards, and after just a series of short point shots, the distance was less than 200 yards, and because of the angle I pulled, the enemy aircraft disappeared in front of me and below.
When I turned right again it appeared in my field of vision: the fuselage flipped over and crashed straight to the ground, the shock wave of the violent impact was like ripples of stones falling on the surface of the water, and the plane slid a few yards, split into pieces, and finally exploded into a ball of fire.
The war reports of the U.S. 338th Fighter Squadron mostly coincide with the German (JG 26 Wing) records, and the American historian Donald Caldwell analyzed in his book JG 26 Wing History that Major McGinn and Lieutenant Cramer attacked Emil Long at the same time, and finally the latter actually shot down; Boreck escaped from Lieutenant Shonenberg. Caldwell went on to speculate that there were 6 Fw 190s on the scene, forming 2 three-plane formations, not the 3 written by Priele, Lang and Boreck flying in front of the formation, and the second Fw 190 formation led by the battle-hardened Gross, flying above to cover. Perhaps when the P-51 was coming, Gross abandoned his commander, a friend of his many years, and led his three-plane formation upwards into the clouds, before being attacked by RAF Squadron 41, gross shot down Warrant Officer Petter Chattin, and was subsequently shot down by two of Chatin's teammates.
Second Lieutenant Darrell Cramer, whose P-51 record ranked second in the 55th Fighter Group
Darrell Cramer (the man in the flight cap) and his ground crew
III. Records of the British Army
The RAF 41st Squadron is part of the Air Defence of Great Britain (formed in 1943 on the basis of Fighter Command and responsible for air defence missions in the British Isles). Equipped with Spitfire XII fighters, at 12:35 the squadron formed two squads of eight Spitfire XIIs, carrying auxiliary fuel tanks from the Liem base in Kent to Leuven, Belgium, and at 13:30 three Fw 190s were found east of Tirlemont (between Leuven and Saint-Treden) at 13:30 to fly east at a low altitude of 300 meters. So one squad took cover, the other swooped in and attacked, Captain Terry Spencer raided the middle Fw 190 starboard, Aircraft 2, Warrant Officer Peter Chatin, attacked the one on the right, the Fw 190 on the left turned right to evade and quickly bit Spencer, the bullet hit Spencer's right wing and elevator, Spencer had to stop the attack and turn sharply to the left to avoid. But seeing that his prey that should have escaped the disaster was also turning to the left, he did not let go of the fatal mistake of the other party, chased after it again, fired and hit with the advance amount of 1.5 times the scope aperture, the Fw 190 falling gear fell, the speed dropped sharply, and after the second round of Spencer's fire, the right side of the hood burst into flames and exploded to the ground.
At this time, Chatin called out "thinking he had killed one", and then claimed to be ready to parachute, but did not give a reason, this is the last message he left, Spencer saw a plane "successfully forced to land near Thilemon, did not put down the landing gear, and then caught fire", which was recognized as Chatin's "spitfire", but teammate Patrick Coleman witnessed "the second one shot down Peter in the fight and also injured Terry's tail".
Coleman and another teammate chased the "second" German aircraft together, Coleman continued to fire from a distance of about 160 meters, the German aircraft entered the dive and pulled up at a large angle, and then stalled at a distance of less than 30 yards in front of Coleman's eyes, and finally fell to the ground and exploded, and a parachute appeared in the line of sight of Coleman and Stowe. The Spitfire pilots, optimistic that Chatin would be captured, began their return voyage, landing back at the British base at 14:45. Spencer and Coleman each recorded 1 result in the air battle, but Chatin, who was reported by them as a parachute, was buried on the European continent.
Spitfire XII is a 1735 hp Rolls-Royce "Griffin" engine installed on the Spitfire V airframe structure, at an altitude of 5500 meters up to 630 km / h, in 1944 equipped with the British Air Defense Force's 41st Squadron and 91st Squadron, originally used as a low-altitude interceptor, but at this time the German army in addition to firing a few V1 missiles, simply unable to threaten the British mainland, so the two Spitfire XII squadrons also began to sweep the coast of Western Europe. Pictured here is the Spitfire XII of the 41st Squadron of the Royal Air Force, taken in April 1944. On September 3, 1944, Captain Terry Spencer and comrade-in-arms Patrick Coleman piloted photographs of fighters with the EB-B and EB-D calling for EB-B and EB-D sweeping away Leuven, each claiming to have shot down one Fw 190
Emil Lang's Green 190A-5 crashed at 13:30 near a village called Overhespen, about 10 kilometers east of Tillemont and 40 kilometers from Brussels, the site of the U.S. 338th Fighter Squadron, and the time of the American pilots' record did not match the time when Lang was shot down, so another view is that Terry Spencer was responsible for the shooting down of Lang. Alfred Gross failed to attack Spencer, instead shooting down Chattin and saving Borek's life, but was then shot down by Patrick Coleman. A notable detail is that, as a former P-51 pilot, Spencer was convinced that he had never seen a single P-51.
Among those who hold the second view are the famous British aviation historians and writers Christopher Shores and Chris Thomas. Later searches and investigations by Belgian historical researchers may have further confirmed their view: the villagers of Upper Hespon heard the sound of gunfire and came outside to see two Fw 190s crashing to the ground, and soon a parachute fell, and finally a spitfire hovered in an attempt to force a landing, and the pilot did not parachute. The Fw 190 pilot (Gross) who parachuted out was shot in mid-air by unknown German soldiers, leaving him scarred by the village church. Chatin most likely died of a serious head injury during the crash, and the villagers saw the body, along with the parachute bag, being removed from the crash site by German soldiers.
Illustration of the area of engagement on September 3, 1944
Boreck crammed back to Düsseldorf in another Fw 190, where his dramatic appearance and the news of the death of the captain through his mouth caused a sensation and shock. In the eyes of his colleagues, Emile Lang has always been a good star, but both auspicious and brilliant have become a thing of the past, and his story stops on September 3, 1944, and with his life, the Shragott United, once known as the "Abbeville Boys" in awe, has dominated Western Europe for four years, and then it will complete the last leg of the road in the local sky.
Terry Spencer (1918–2009), graduated in engineering from the University of Birmingham and enlisted in the Royal Army of Engineers. In 1941 he volunteered to the Air Force to compensate for the loss of pilots in the Battle of Britain, and was promoted to officer that year. In early 1943 he flew Mustang fighter jets to sweep ground and sea targets in Western Europe, and in early May 1944 he joined the 41st Squadron of the Royal Air Force, defending the homeland with the team, during which time he flew at least seven Spitfire XII missiles claiming to shoot down seven V1 missiles. On 3 September, Spencer led a team to shoot down an Fw 190 in a mission to sweep Belgium, achieving the only air combat result of his military career. At the end of November, Spencer led the vanguard of the squadron into the Belgian base ahead of schedule. On 4 January 1945 he was transferred to the 350th Squadron (Belgian Squadron) of the same wing (122nd Wing). On 26 February, he was captured in parachuting in the Rhine-Lingen area after being hit by German anti-aircraft fire in a Spitfire XIV, but a month later he seized the opportunity of the guards' negligence to escape from prison and return to the army. In early April as squadron leader of the 350th Squadron, on 19 April he destroyed a ground-based Ju 88 in the Wismar area, but the plane was hit by a carrier-based rocket launcher, Spencer broke away from the burning Spitfire XIV, miraculously survived the ultra-low skydiving at an ultra-low altitude of 9.1 meters above the sea, setting a Guinness World Record for the lowest successful skydiving height, although captured again due to injuries, but as the war drew to a close, he was rescued in hospital two weeks later, and was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war, Spencer became a successful photographer, covering military and international events such as the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Middle East War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as literary stars such as the Beatles, Queen, Bob Dylan, Grace Kelly, and Katharine Hepburn.
Alfred Gross (1919–1947) joined the headquarters of the JG 26 Second Brigade from JG 54 11th Squadron in late August 1944 at the invitation of his friend Emile Lang. Wounded on 3 September, he never returned to combat, and in April of the following year he was awarded the Knight's Cross for a total of 175 appearances and the shooting down of 52 enemy aircraft. He died of tuberculosis on 19 August 1947
Warrant Officer Peter Chatin, whose flight log ended on September 3, 1944, was filled by teammate Coleman for him on: "Sweep Liège – Skydive at Tilremont at 1:40pm". Chatin was buried locally by German soldiers at the church in the village of Upper Hespen. In 1947, it was moved to the Geel War Cemetery in Antwerp.
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