[George Hopp]

I would have been back sooner but it took some time to find Rudolf Schoenert's letter about the Schräge Musik matter. I eventually found it in the Juli/August 1967 issue of Jägerblatt. In it he states his involvement in the development of that weapons system. It may not answer all questions that have been put forward about this matter, but hopefully it will help.

I should say that the background to Schoenert's letter was a short article in the Juni 1967 issue of Jägerblatt by Dieter Herwig of the Deutsches Studienbüro für Luftfahrt, in which he stated that the German oblique armament development was based on information supplied by Comdr. Nagamori during his visit to Germany in 1944 (having come by U-boat).

According to Schoenert's letter, the first time oblique armament was proposed for the Luftwaffe was in a letter he sent to General Kammhuber in August 1941. But, when General Kammhuber discussed this matter with "the most successful night fighers Lent and Streib" they rejected the idea for different reasons. After that, nothing happened until July 1942 when at a presentation to him of the Knight's Cross, Schoenert again tried to win over General Kammhuber to his idea. As a result of this, the General approved the equipping of 3 Do 217s with this armament for Schoenert's Staffel.

So, in the autumn of 1942, at the weapons test centre at Tarnewitz, a test rig with a weapon firing upwards at 90 degrees was tested and achieved more than 90% hits on a sleeve target in flight. It turned out, however, that aiming the weapon upwards at 90 degrees was very uncomfortable for the pilot because pulling his head back to the angle necessary to aim the weapon disrupted his sense of equilibrium and led to incorrect steering movements. An angle of incidence of the weapons of 65 degrees was found to be a suitable solution. The Dornier works then equipped 3 Do 217s with four, or six, oblique-firing MG 151s, rigidly mounted in the bomb bay area. In early 1943 these a/c were delivered to the unit.

When a Waffen-Oberfeldwebel of II./NJG 5 in Parchim saw his Kommandeur's Do 217 equipped with oblique armament, he came up with the idea of inserting a comparable twin MG-FF unit in the rear part of the cabin of an Me 110. Difficulties caused by trying to mount a gunsight in the small area between the head of the pilot and the canopy, were solved together by the Waffen-Oberfeldwebel and his Kommandeur (Schoenert used the third person designation for himself and others throughout his letter). The "home-built" prototype built in the workshops at Parchim was so good that the Kommandeur arranged, in secret and without informing the RLM, to reequip the entire Gruppe in the Parchim workshops. Nevertheless the news of this new weapon got around, and so Me 110 aircraft of other units of the Nachtjagd were reequipped at Parchim. The name "Schräge Musik" was introduced for security purposes. Even the protruding barrels of the 2 cm cannon were desguised as antenna mounts and equipped with phony antennas. (I think that the secrecy was to avoid the red tape that would flow from the RLM when this unauthorized modification was discovered.)

The first German victory with "Schräge Musik" was obtained with one of the Do 217 aircraft in May 1943 during an RAF attack on Berlin (as there don't appear to have been any RAF attacks on Berlin in May 1943, I go back to Rick's comments about a Schoenert victory on 21 Apr 43 during an RAF attack Stettin and Rostock, and am thinking that Schoenert's memory failed him on the date of the victory. By the way, do you have a list of Schoenert's victories, Rick? If so would it be possible to get a copy?). The pilot who took off from Parchim on this night was the same person who had made the initial proposal to General Kammhuber in August 1941. So, all this information was available a long time before the visit of Comdr. Nagamori in 1944.

Schoenert noted that the RAF had a sort of "Schräge Musik" in the form of its Defiant, in which the a/c would sneak beneath a German bomber, and the observer would aim the guns of his turret upwards and "saw" off the wings of the German bomber. There were also reports of English fighter pilots mounting machine guns that fired upwards during the First World War.

In closing, he said that it appeared that the "Schräge Musik" was invented in different countries, at different times, independently of each other. So it was nearly impossible to determine who actually invented the "Schräge Musik."

In the October 1967 issue of Jägerblatt, Dieter Herwig noted the following: French Nieuport Scouts of 1915 were equipped with upward firing machine guns. In addition, in reading through the documents of the "Bordwaffen und Sonderwaffen" unit of the RLM (TRL/G1-E-6a) it was found that the Reichswehr had even before 1933 at its test centre in Lipezk, near Moscow, armed Rohrback Rolands with various types of armament, including oblique weaponry.

Hope this helps,
George