Hauptmann Wilhelm Kunze, Staffelkapitän 3./KG 2

[Simon Trew]

I wonder if anybody can shed a little further light on this officer, as well as the more general (and associated) topic of Luftwaffe bomber pilot ages in the latter stages of the war?

UKNA AIR 40/3092, secret monitoring report SRA 4946 (information received 7 February 1944) includes extracts from a conversation between three NCO prisoners, two of whom were captured in the early stages of Operation ‘Steinbock’. Inter alia, one of them, Unteroffizier Willi Engelhardt, W/T operator from 1./KG 2 (Do 217 M, U5+LH, shot down into the Channel at 2210 hrs on 21 January 1944) states that a Staffelkapitän in his geschwader called Hauptmann Kunze had “risen from the ranks” and had “been serving for eighteen years.”

Clearly this is Hauptmann Wilhelm Kunze, confirmed by Balke KG 2 p.408 as Staffelkapitän of 3./KG 2 from 3 July 1943 to October 1944.

http://www.ww2.dk/Lw%20Offz%20-%20G-K%20Apr%202022.pdf provides additional details. The DOB is given there as 23 February 1910, which would make Kunze 33 years old at the start of ‘Steinbock’. Since he survived ‘Steinbock’ (I’m unclear how much flying he did during the operation as ‘Luftwaffe Officers G-K’ says he was WIA in December 1943; but since he survived a crash-landing on 14 May I assume he flew in at least some ‘Steinbock’ missions), he would have been 34 years old when the campaign ended.

As per a previous posting (http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showth...t=61899&page=2, my post of 25 April 2022), I note that of my sample of 79 ‘Steinbock’ pilots, eight were between 29 and 32 years old on 21 January 1944. The eldest among that group was Hauptmann Walter Schmitt, pilot and Staffelkapitän in 2./KG 66 (Ju 188, Z6+EK, killed in action in 19-20 March raid against Hull). His DOB (BA-MA RL 10/638) was 4 April 1911, so he was 32 when ‘Steinbock’ began and a few weeks short of his 33rd birthday when he died.

In SRA 4946, Engelhardt sheds a little light on Kunze’s personality and attributes to Kunze the claim to be ‘Germany’s oldest pilot’ [‘bomber’ pilot intended??]. Obviously, there may have been some exaggeration for effect in a conversation between Luftwaffe prisoners. Still, I found it interesting, not least because at 33-34 years old, Kunze now appears as my oldest ‘Steinbock’ pilot.

A few questions, if I may?

First, at what age could one join the German armed forces in the mid-1920s? To have served 18 years by early 1944 (as Engelhardt states), Kunze would have had to be 15 years old when he joined up, presumably in 1925 (with a later transfer to the Luftwaffe). Was it possible to join the German armed forces at this age in the mid-1920s?

Second, does anybody know anything about Kunze’s early life? http://www.ww2.dk/Lw%20Offz%20-%20G-K%20Apr%202022.pdf has him joining 11.(Erg.)/KG 2 in April 1941 and being promoted to Oberleutnant on 16 July 1941. Does anybody know anything about his career pre-April 1941? If he’d joined up in 1925 as a fifteen-year-old, he’d have been 29 at the start of the war and would have done well over a decade of service. Was this enough (assuming a pre-war transfer to the Luftwaffe) to have made it to the point in an NCO career where promotion to officer rank became possible?

Third, does anybody have a rough idea of the proportion of Luftwaffe officer pilots who were “promoted from the ranks”, as claimed by Engelhardt for Kunze? I have a reasonably good idea regarding this topic when it comes to German junior officers who fought as members of their ground forces in Normandy, but am ignorant regarding their Luftwaffe equivalents.

Fourth and finally, how do forum users feel about Engelhardt’s claim (attributed to Kunze himself) that Kunze was ‘Germany’s oldest [bomber??] pilot’? Was this (if it was said at all) mere bombast, designed to intimidate (Engelhardt: “I pitied his Staffel. What a to-do he made with them.")? Or was being an operational bomber pilot at the age of 33 really rather unusual by the final fifteen months of the war? As noted above, Kunze is certainly the oldest ‘Steinbock’ pilot I have come across – albeit not by much and my sample could certainly be bigger, as it probably amounts to only about 10% of all ‘Steinbock’ pilots, maybe not even that amount. But that might not mean very much; maybe there were plenty of 1944 Luftwaffe bomber pilots in their mid-30s, even their 40s? Or would such men largely be in training, test pilot, staff officer or desk roles by that stage of the war, if they were still alive? Put simply, is the statement attributed to Kunze ludicrous, or more likely just a little bit of an exaggeration?

Many thanks in advance for any help that can be offered.

Simon

[ju55dk]

Personalunterlagen Freiburg:
PERS 6/186879
Kunze, Wilhelm
Bestandsbezeichnung
Personalunterlagen von Angehörigen der Reichswehr und Wehrmacht
Geburtsdatum
23.2.1910
Amtsbezeichnung/Dienstgrad
Hauptmann Kr.O.
Unterlagenart
Personalakte

Junker

[VtwinVince]

Keep in mind that German methods for calculating 'Dienstzeit', or length of service, were somewhat convoluted.

[Simon Trew]

Thanks very much for those bits of information. So definitely Reichswehr service and some question mark about whether 18 years really means 18 years? I think in the context of the conversation, it was meant literally, but maybe not.

[Chris Goss]

...and don't forget many POWs gave incorrect information for obvious reasons

[FalkeEins]

Originally Posted by Simon Trew

Still, I found it interesting, not least because at 33-34 years old, Kunze now appears as my oldest ‘Steinbock’ pilot.

....wondering whether you've discovered anything about Kunze's Kommodore who one suspects would have been even older. Kurt Kessel commanded KG 2 through all of 1943, was awarded the RK in January 1944 and left the unit in April 44 for a staff job...(IIRC). He is pictured alongside a Do 217 with his 'crew' wearing the RK so I've assumed he must have flown a Steinbock sortie or two. Nobody seems to mention him though - not even the German historian of KG 2

[Chris Goss]

Karl Kessel was born 1 Jun 12 so younger. He joined the Army in 1933 and then moved to the Luftwaffe in 1935

[FalkeEins]

that's the one ..Karl. Thanks Chris. Did he fly operationally ?

[Simon Trew]

Chris - on the matter of deliberate misinformation, I entirely agree that one has to be careful (in principle, almost regardless of one's prior level of knowledge - in my case, 'developing') about the content of prisoner interrogations and associated documents. Indeed, an interesting feature of the secretly monitored conversations that I'm currently working my way through is the fact that several prisoners explicitly tell (or assert to) their cell-mates that they have lied to their interrogators. This may or may not be true; if one had spilled the beans, I suspect one might not advertise the fact to one's comrades. I also suspect that claims along these lines speak to what I think is a bigger problem (possibly relevant in the case that interests me here) with the monitored conversations - i.e. the tendency of young men to try to be competitive in their conversations (my plane was 5 mph faster than yours, my boss was harder than yours ...). Whether Engelhardt was 'talking up' Kunze's claims, and putting words in his mouth ('I'm the oldest pilot in the Luftwaffe'), is entirely unclear to me - which I guess is one of the reasons I asked the question here.

On the matter of senior officers flying with their units, that's an interesting one. I'm still working my way through KG 2 ADI(K) reports, and because of the way I've filed them, the information is a bit scattered. ADI(K) 31, 39, 81. 87, 91, 92, 93, 94, 116, 117, 126, 143, 176, 178, 180, 188, 189, 215, 218 and 238 (KG 2 reports from the Steinbock period) don't seem to say anything explicit on the matter. But some of the bigger raid reports, which consolidate information from prisoners from various units (among them KG 2), might do so. I need to look at Balke too.

Relevant here, though, might be the following notes I made based on one of the conversation monitoring (not interrogation) reports:

AIR 40/3092, SRA 4935, information received 6 February: Unteroffizier Stapelfeldt, W/T operator from 5./KG 6 (Ju 88, 3E+ON, plane damaged and two crew baled out over UK on 29 Jan), says that senior officers from KG 6 (Gruppe and Geschwader COs) were not allowed to fly on operations. “Only one Staffelkapitän was allowed to fly on operations with us.”

I don't know if this was the product of policy (as was the case with fighter unit senior officers during the Normandy campaign) or whether different units had different approaches to this particular decision. But it might shed a little light on the issue in more general terms.

[Simon Trew]

Should have added with reference to SRA 4935 that (a) Stapelfeldt might not have been accurate in his assertion and (b) that even if he was accurate, that doesn't mean things might not have changed later during Steinbock. He was, after all, one of the earliest Steinbock PWs.