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    Sturmjäger of JG4

As well as special aircraft and special tactics, the elite Sturmgruppe units were manned by volunteer pilots. A Sturmbock pilot needed a special courage and his career was likely to be spectacular but short. One of the most controversial aspects of the new Sturmgruppen, at least post-war, was the requirement to sign the Verphlictungserklärung or affidavit which a pilot had to do before he was accepted into a Sturmgruppe.  Each pilot had to sign an affidavit as follows:                  I, -, do solemnly undertake that on each occasion on which I make contact with an enemy four-engined bomber I shall press home my attack to the shortest range and will, if my firing pass is not successful, destroy the enemy aircraft by ramming.

        The symbol of the unit became the 'whites of their eyes insignia' which represented the close quarter nature of their combat. But the notion that pilots were expected to sacrifice themselves was to a large extent sensationalised in Walther Dahl's historically exaggerated account entitled 'Rammjäger'. It was not  until the end was in sight that calls for kamikaze style or Selbstopfer missions went out.

Dahl  has described how he lead the Sturmgruppe into the attack.

" An allen kleinen Brüder : noch dichter aufschliessen zum Sturmangriff!! Wer keinen abschiesst , rammt !!  Ra-ba-za-nel-la !!!

( Although in a recent interview Hans Weik confirmed that the term 'Rammjäger' was never part of Luftwaffe jargon and that Dahl never led the Sturmgruppe in for a Sturm attack  )

There is some evidence to suggest that the Japanese were influenced by this concept and took it to it's logical conclusion. In the event  Hauptman Willi Moritz was to value his pilots lives rather more than certain of the more zealous advocates of Sturm tactics and quietly dropped the matter of the signed declaration to ram  after taking over IV./JG3 in June 1944.

        Walther Dahl, Wilhelm Moritz and Oskar Romm

  Leutnant Walther Hagenah who flew with IV.(Sturm) Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 3, explained the terms of the affidavit to author Dr Alfred Price:

" It was made clear to us that, having signed the affidavit, failure to carry out its conditions would render us liable to trial by court martial on a charge of cowardice in the face of the enemy. No man was forced to sign, however, and there were no recriminations against those who did not wish to do so; they simply did not join the ranks of the Sturmgruppe..."

         Despite the fact that each of them had signed the affidavit indicating their readiness to ram the enemy bombers if all else failed, it was rare for Sturmgruppe pilots to take this course. Hagenah never rammed a bomber, nor did he ever see anyone else do so:  "If we held our formation, ran the gauntlet of the bombers' defensive fire and reached a firing position l00yd behind a bomber, with our powerful cannon it was a relatively simple matter to get a kill." If few pilots resorted to actually ramming a bomber unless they had the chance of escaping safely, others were more aggressive.  As Staffelkapitän of 14 Staffel  Werner Gerth had new pilots sign the Sturmgruppe affidavit as recorded by Uffz Karl Kapteina who joined 14 Staffel in October 1944. In his welcome speech to new arrivals Gerth made light of the commitment to ram given the efficacy of the Sturm tactic and weapons, although went on to describe how a pilot should carry out the Rammstoss and successfully bail out. Werner Gerth  reputedly rammed on at least five occasions and was shot down at least 11 times . He was finally killed when his parachute failed to open after ramming a B-17 near Halle.  There were a few occasions when pilots reached a firing position and found, for example, that their weapons had jammed. They then opened their throttle, pulled up a little, dived down and rammed. By and large, however, the cannon with its explosive shells were very reliable and ramming was rarely necessary. Indeed the Sturmgruppen never received instructions from the Jagdwaffeführung on how best to ram the enemy bombers though the matter was, of course, the subject of discussions in the Kasino (crews messroom). Of the pilots who made ramming attacks, about half escaped without serious injury.

Willi Maximowitz   Hans Weik  Klaus Neumann  Walter Hagenah    Karl-Heinz von den Steinen

Werner Gerth   Willi Unger    Walther Dahl    Ekkehard Tichy  

Siegfried Müller    Horst Petzschler  Erwin Bacsila  Heinz Bake

Ace pilots of II./JG 300

All the pilots portrayed on these pages were brave men. They were not fanatics, certainly not Nazis. They were Germany's equivalent of  'The Few' and, just as the young fighter pilots of the RAF laid down their lives defending their country in 1940, so these young sometimes teenage, Jagdflieger fought to defend their families and their homeland. No doubt, like daring young men on all sides,  they were looking for a little bit of glory. But as the Third Reich began to reap the whirlwind, advances in technology and the industrial might of the USA meant that the odds were stacked heavily against their survival.  Even experience and courage was not enough when faced with impossible odds. By the 3rd August 1944 when Heinz Zimkeit was shot down and killed, the 12 th Staffel of IV./JG 3 was in Willi Unger's words " stark geschmolzen ", had literally melted away and was down to Schwarm strength. Only four Sturmbocks of  12 Staffel took off from Schongau on the 3rd August mission to combat the bombers. All of them were shot down.   Only four men from Sturmstaffel 1's pilot roster of thirty six survived the war.....