Mission over the Lechtal Alps 3 August 1944
Willi Unger is perhaps one of the most well known
of the Sturmbock pilots of IV./JG 3. He has recently celebrated his 80th
birthday and is still replying to letters from enthusiasts and researchers
from around the world. He was born in March 1920 in Warstein Westphalia and
like many young German boys grew up with a passion for aviation and sailplane
flying and became an accomplished glider pilot. He trained as an engineer
and passed his Facharbeiterprüfung on the 1st September 1939 .
When war broke out he joined the Luftwaffe but with his engineering background found himself serving as a Flugzeugmechaniker despite his flying qualifications and accomplishments thus far. It was not until early 1943 when the years of easy victories were long gone that he was accepted for fighter pilots training with I./JG104 and was promoted to Unteroffizier in December 1943 attending advanced fighter training school. His first combat posting was to IV./JG 3 in March 1944 flying the Bf 109G-6 and his first combat flight or Feindflug on the 29th March.
He shot down his first four-engined bomber on 11th April 1944 and in the words of Ernst Obermaier " wurde in kurzer Zeit zu einem der erfolgreichsten Sturmjäger der Reichsverteidigung ", became in just a short time one of the most successful assault fighter pilots in the defence of the Reich. In April 1944 he shot down eight of the dreaded Ami Viermots, American four-engined bombers but was shot down himself for the first time on 8 May 1944 carrying out a successful Bauchlandung or belly landing.
In the battle over Oschersleben on 7th July 1944 he downed two Liberators, his 10th and 11th victories. On 3rd August Unger again shot down two Liberators, but he was himself shot down over the Lechtal Alps, but parachuted safely from his damaged Focke-Wulf 190A-8 yellow 7 + ~. As Willi himself readily admits he was lucky .. " Ich selber hatte bei den Einsätzen gegen die viermotorigen Bombern sehr viel Glück . Ich wurde dreimal abgeschossen , kam immer mit leichten Verletzungen davon....I was very fortunate on missions against the bombers being shot down three times but always escaping with only slight injuries..."
Willi Ungar was kind enough to send me a report relating his experiences on the 3rd August 1944 which also details his researches post war into the fates of some of his comrades lost and missing from the 3rd August air battle. This was material not used by Jochen Prien in his Chronik and I will translate and post this here in the near future. Unger's Sturmbock is invariably presented as the Krebs-gerät equipped gelbe 17 also illustrated on these pages.
This and similar photos were taken in May 1944 when Unger's 12th Staffel was testing this lethal rearward firing rocket launcher. However a copy of Willi Unger's Flug-buch for the end of June through to August 1944 shows that the famous Krebsgerät equipped Sturmbock gelbe 17 is not even mentioned at all ! Gelbe 14, 6, 10, 7, 1 and 9 are mentioned .
On 29th August he shot down two Flying Fortresses around Trenèín
(Slovakia) and during this month 1944 he received the Deutsche Kreuz in Gold
(German Cross in Gold). He was awarded the Ritterkreuz on 23rd October 1944
by which time he had shot down some nineteen heavy bombers. In December 1944
he was promoted to Leutnant and married his wife Anni. ( Willi and Anni
celebrated their Golden wedding anniversary in 1994 with their four children
and seven grandchildren )
In February 1945 , IV./JG 3 moved to the Russian Front. Willi Unger had attended a fighter leaders course or Verbandführerslehrgang in January 1945 and became a Staffelführer with 14./JG 3 in Prenzlau flying missions along the Oder front. On 19th February he downed a P-39 Airacobra and on 15th March shot down two Russian Pe-2 bombers. At the end of March 1945 he joined JG 7 to be trained on the new Me 262 jet fighters like a number of experienced fighter pilots, but he scored no more victories. He flew comparatively few combat missions but achieved 23 (maybe more) confirmed victories. On the Western Front he shot down 20 four-engined bombers. Post war he was an active sports flyer winning a number of gliding competitions. He also resumed his job as engineer/fitter retiring in 1981. He still lives in Warstein.
My thanks to Willi Unger for sending photos and biographical information for this website. My thanks also to Erich Brown for further information.
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