Verheizt im Oderbruch: Überzähliges Fliegendes Personal als "Fliegerschul-Bataillon" im April 1945 im Erdkampfeinsatz

[edwest2]

Description translation by Google translate:

Towards the end of the war, due to a lack of petrol, thousands of members of the flying staff, the ground organization - aircraft control officers, airfield operations companies, radio direction finders, etc. - and the schools and other training facilities were surplus to requirements. They were mostly professional soldiers in the enlisted and non-commissioned officer ranks. In mid-March 1945, around 150 flight instructors and radio operator instructors from the B 31 pilot school, crews from Kampfgeschwader 53 and 40, etc. were grouped together in Brandis-Polenz and brought to Wandlitz, north of Berlin, by electric transport. There were also fighter pilots with over 200 missions to England, highly decorated with the German Cross in Gold. Additional airforce personnel had already been assembled there. From these approximately 1,000 men, a regiment was formed into 2 battalions, structured like an infantry regiment, and dressed in paratrooper uniforms. The 1st Battalion was given the name Aviation School Battalion. At the beginning of April, the regiment was transferred on foot to the 9th Army on the Oder in Wriezen and placed under the 25th Panzergrenadier Division. When the Red Army stormed Berlin on April 16, the Luftwaffe regiment found itself caught up in the maelstrom of the 9th Army's demise. The author, a radio operator instructor with 3,000 hours of flying time, initially employed as a telephone squad leader at the regimental headquarters, describes the desperate and horrific defensive battles, and after the regiment was shattered, the terrible retreat battles of the combat group he led until his capture on May 4th, in great detail vivid.

Available through Amazon but I thought those in Europe might prefer a European source.

https://www.verlag-scherzer.de/buech...oderbruch.html

Usual disclaimer,
Ed

[Larry deZeng]

Ed: your link says the author was a telephone switchboard supervisor in a regimental headquarters who experienced these events first hand and survived. So I am guessing he wrote this some time ago (if still with us, he would be about 102 to 104 today, or possibly even older) and it's just now surfacing for publication.

L. deZ.

[edwest2]

Edit. As it turns out, the publisher I posted a link to was started by the author: "Our publishing house was founded as Scherzers Militaer-Verlag in 1990 by Veit Scherzer in Bayreuth. From 1993 to 2011 the publisher was based in Ranis/Thuringia." I suspect the decision to publish this book was delayed to a later, pre-determined date.

[John Manrho]

This is not the only unit. Others were sent to the Harz and went into battle there. Again several lost their lives.