Heinz Knoke : "I Flew for the Führer"

[Rob Romero]

Awsome melding of reasearch and technology to produce a reasonable facimile of history!

I hope you are financially supported to produce further outstanding work.

Recommend you read and use The War Diary of Helmut Lipfert (203). This great expert flew mainly against the Russians, but also against some against the West. A number of the exploits described are almost beyond beleif!

Thanks Again

Rob Romero

[tcolvin]

Your film is remarkable.
I have a question and, if you want them, a few comments.
1. Why is Knoke's airfield in the mountains? Surely he was flying out of Jever in Friesland, which is flat.
2. Knoke's problem with bombing the bombers, and why it was discontinued, was that it turned the Me-109 into a dog which took for ever to climb to altitude, and made it defenceless.
3. Attached is a sketch from the RAF Flying Review of August 1953 showing Knoke bombing B24s. Although he never claimed a B24 by bombing, as your film correctly states, Knoke would surely have OK'd this rendering as accurate.
4. The problem with Knoke's rockets, as IL-2 and Typhoon pilots also discovered, was inaccuracy due to gravity drop and the reason why the weapon was abandoned. Showing this effect might add interest to your film.
5. The other attached photograph shows how Knoke and his Staffel actually dressed.
6. Do you or anyone know whether Knoke himself was the driver for all of this low-tech experimentation in how to counter daylight bombers? The LW was, of course, at that time developing high-tech solutions like the ground-launched Wasserfall rocket and Komet rocket aircraft.
7. Knoke became quite a character in Schortens and Jever after the war, working for a brewery and getting elected as a local councillor.

Tony

[biltongbru]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Your film is remarkable.

Originally Posted by tcolvin

I have a question and, if you want them, a few comments.
1. Why is Knoke's airfield in the mountains? Surely he was flying out of Jever in Friesland, which is flat.
2. Knoke's problem with bombing the bombers, and why it was discontinued, was that it turned the Me-109 into a dog which took for ever to climb to altitude, and made it defenceless.
3. Attached is a sketch from the RAF Flying Review of August 1953 showing Knoke bombing B24s. Although he never claimed a B24 by bombing, as your film correctly states, Knoke would surely have OK'd this rendering as accurate.
4. The problem with Knoke's rockets, as IL-2 and Typhoon pilots also discovered, was inaccuracy due to gravity drop and the reason why the weapon was abandoned. Showing this effect might add interest to your film.
5. The other attached photograph shows how Knoke and his Staffel actually dressed.
6. Do you or anyone know whether Knoke himself was the driver for all of this low-tech experimentation in how to counter daylight bombers? The LW was, of course, at that time developing high-tech solutions like the ground-launched Wasserfall rocket and Komet rocket aircraft.
7. Knoke became quite a character in Schortens and Jever after the war, working for a brewery and getting elected as a local councillor.

Tony

Thanks Tony for the information and interest; I will answer to the best of what I know: in red

Your film is remarkable. Thank You

1. Why is Knoke's airfield in the mountains? Surely he was flying out of Jever in Friesland, which is flat. You are 100% correct, Jever has a flat landscape, mistake in the movie. The practicality by making this amateur movie was that I had to find and film a large piece of lawn to represent the airfield in the vicinity where I live (7000km from Jever lol) and after a long search found this landscape in a wine estate where the mountain was in the back ground and looked from a cinematic point of view acceptable.



2. Knoke's problem with bombing the bombers, and why it was discontinued, was that it turned the Me-109 into a dog which took for ever to climb to altitude, and made it defenceless. Correct, in Knoke's book he mentions what struggle they had to gain the enormous altitude with the 250kg extra bomb weight. Remember that the attack shown in the movie was before the Allied escort was a threat to the Luftwaffe fighters. When the Allied fighters appeared, then any German fighter carrying a bomb was a perfect sitting duck.

3. Attached is a sketch from the RAF Flying Review of August 1953 showing Knoke bombing B24s. Although he never claimed a B24 by bombing, as your film correctly states, Knoke would surely have OK'd this rendering as accurate. I think the picture illustrates the correct relative angle of attack and that is above and in the same direction as the bomber stream. This makes sense as the fighters have time to position themselves at the correct spot above the formation for "accurate" bombing.
In my opinion the picture shows the Me to close to the bombers. In Knoke's book he states that they move in "high above the bomber formation" I would suggest this to be a safe distance at least 1000m above the bombers to be safe from the masses of 50cals on board the bombers.


4. The problem with Knoke's rockets, as IL-2 and Typhoon pilots also discovered, was inaccuracy due to gravity drop and the reason why the weapon was abandoned. Showing this effect might add interest to your film. The rockets used by Knoke (Werfergranate 21 (Wfr. Gr. 21)) was actually a Luftwaffe make shift modification of the 210mm Nebelwerfer artillery rocket system. The idea was to bombard the closely packed bomber formation from a safe distance behind (2000 feet he mention in the book) in an effort to break up the formation and then to attack the single aircraft breaking away. This weapon was never intended to be a pin-point application as the case was with the Allied air launched rockets. This was more of an area weapon. The tubes were angled at 15 degrees due to the considerable drop of these projectiles after the short rocket burn time. The rockets were equipped with time delayed fuses (think about 15 seconds) and were known as rocket mortars due to the mortar like trajectory. Very crude system actually. The incident of the film was actually a huge luck shot!
After a rocket attack the rocket tubes were jettisoned in case of enemy fighter threats because the tubes buggered up the aircraft aerodynamics.
The Luftwaffe pilots referred to these tubes as "stove pipes"

You will see in the movie the ascent of the rocket at launch and decent before hitting the b-17.

5. The other attached photograph shows how Knoke and his Staffel actually dressed. thanks, this pic also appears in Knoke's book.

6. Do you or anyone know whether Knoke himself was the driver for all of this low-tech experimentation in how to counter daylight bombers? The LW was, of course, at that time developing high-tech solutions like the ground-launched Wasserfall rocket and Komet rocket aircraft. Yes, according to his book he was the driver of this project and got the go-ahead for development of the technique from Luftwaffe high command after some presentations.

7. Knoke became quite a character in Schortens and Jever after the war, working for a brewery and getting elected as a local councillor.Yes, he also became involved with a right wing political party that was banned....unfortunately some critics hang the Nazi banner on him regarding this...

[Nick Beale]

Congratulations on the film, next could I request scenes from the later chapters of "The Big Show"?

While Tony says "The problem with Knoke's rockets, as IL-2 and Typhoon pilots also discovered, was inaccuracy due to gravity drop", I remember reading that the British 60-lb. RP had a problem common to fin-stabilised projectiles — they act like a weather vane and turned into the wind.

[tcolvin]

One other nitpicking comment, Biltongbru.

The sole objective of the frontal attack, AFAIK, was to kill or disable the bomber pilot and co-pilot and smash the dashboard and controls.
The bomber must then inevitably crash, while the only option for the rest of the crew would be to bail out.
To minimise the risk of collision when the bomber dropped its nose as a result of the pilots being shot up, the German pilot would at the last moment pull up over the bomber.

Your film instead shows Knoke aiming at the B24's engines, and then sheering off below the bomber rather than pulling above it.

The attached picture is from a wartime (1944) publication issued by 8 USAAF and published by HMSO. It shows that the Americans also understood that the German tactic was to aim straight at the bomber pilots.
Also, it shows the FW190 going in with the right wing down. This attitude was probably intended to maximise the chance that some of the spread from the four cannon would also take out the B17's front gunner as collateral damage, without the German pilot having to shift the Revi sight from aiming directly at the bomber pilots in the cockpit.

Frontal attack must have tested the bravery of both fighter and bomber pilots to the absolute limit.

Tony

[biltongbru]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

One other nitpicking comment, Biltongbru.

The sole objective of the frontal attack, AFAIK, was to kill or disable the bomber pilot and co-pilot and smash the dashboard and controls.
The bomber must then inevitably crash, while the only option for the rest of the crew would be to bail out.
To minimise the risk of collision when the bomber dropped its nose as a result of the pilots being shot up, the German pilot would at the last moment pull up over the bomber.

Your film instead shows Knoke aiming at the B24's engines, and then sheering off below the bomber rather than pulling above it.

The attached picture is from a wartime (1944) publication issued by 8 USAAF and published by HMSO. It shows that the Americans also understood that the German tactic was to aim straight at the bomber pilots.
Also, it shows the FW190 going in with the right wing down. This attitude was probably intended to maximise the chance that some of the spread from the four cannon would also take out the B17's front gunner as collateral damage, without the German pilot having to shift the Revi sight from aiming directly at the bomber pilots in the cockpit.

Frontal attack must have tested the bravery of both fighter and bomber pilots to the absolute limit.

Tony

Hi Tony;

Thanks again; In reply of what you say is that the Narator do an exact quote from the text in the book as Heinz Knoke wrote it; in this specific run he said that he nearly scraped the belly of the B24 when he passed, so he must have passed under the B24.

[tcolvin]

Thanks, Biltongbru.

The narrator also, as I recall, says that Knoke regarded his attack on the B24 as less than optimal.

One other thought; the B17 pilot and co-pilot had nothing substantial to stop the cannon shells from powering straight into their bodies, while the pilots of both the Me109 and FW190 were almost completely protected by the large mass of the engine.
So bomber pilots had to expend more of their limited supply of courage than fighter pilots.

Not a very nice subject for Christmas Day - but I hope everyone had as good a day as I did, and all the best for 2010.

Tony

[George Hopp]

In fact there was another edition of "I flew for the Fuhrer" published in 1991 by Greenhill Books. But, as far as I can tell, it was the original with a 2 1/2 page afterword by the author. This book and the Big Show are both favourites of mine.

If I may make 3 small comments on your great and successful effort:
1. The Bf 109Gs of early 1943 would not have had the tall tail, but the short one.
2. The B-24s would probably still have had the streamlined nose without the nose turret.
3. On grund alert the pilot would have probably have been strapped in.

It's a wonderful show and thank you for both creating it, and then posting it.

All the best,
George Hopp

[biltongbru]

Originally Posted by George Hopp

In fact there was another edition of "I flew for the Fuhrer" published in 1991 by Greenhill Books. But, as far as I can tell, it was the original with a 2 1/2 page afterword by the author. This book and the Big Show are both favourites of mine.

If I may make 3 small comments on your great and successful effort:
1. The Bf 109Gs of early 1943 would not have had the tall tail, but the short one.
2. The B-24s would probably still have had the streamlined nose without the nose turret.
3. On grund alert the pilot would have probably have been strapped in.

It's a wonderful show and thank you for both creating it, and then posting it.

All the best,
George Hopp

Well picked up George! You are correct on all accounts.

The flight simulator graphics that I used unfortunately do not have the B-24 D version available As I mentioned previously; research have shown that this Liberator, "Maisie", piloted by the unfortunate Capt Adams, was the first Liberator to be brought down on German soil and was definitely the D model.

With the bf109 tall tail model I slipped up; from about 2000 people being watching this vid the past 3 days you are the first to notice and mention.

Thanks for the complements. it was fun making this as a hobby but the production took me 6 months.

[Richard Mills]

biltongbru

I jave just watched these 2 films on You-tube and enjoyed them both very much indeed.

It is obvious that an enormous amount of work went into the production of this and that is truly commendable.

The source book remains one of the most riveting diaries of a Luftwaffe piolot that I have read and I think that you have certainly given justice to Knocke's book.

Do you have any plans for similar projects in the future?

Regards Richard.