Bf 109 Defence of the Reich Aces

The start of the Luftwaffe's 820-day Defence of the Reich campaign coincided with one of the major turning points of the war. The opening shots were exchanged on 27 January 1943 when 53 American B–17 Flying Fortresses bombed the North Sea naval base of Wilhelmshaven. This was the first time that the Eighth Air Force had attacked a target within Germany itself. Six days later, and over 1500 miles to the east, the last emaciated survivors of Generalfeldmarschall von Paulus' 6. Armee — once a third of a million strong — surrendered to Soviet troops at Stalingrad. Never before had Hitler's forces suffered such a crushing defeat. And after this date never again would they win a major victory.

The aerial battle in defence of the Reich would thus be played out against a backdrop of the continual reverses and withdrawals taking place on all the other fighting fronts. By the spring of 1945 German troops in the east, who had once stood at the very gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, would have been pushed back into the heart of their own capital, Berlin. In the Mediterranean, Axis forces in North Africa had long ago surrendered, setting in train the invasions of Sicily and Italy and the subsequent slow, stubborn retreat northwards into the shadow of the Austrian Alps. And in north–west Europe those defenders of Normandy who had managed to escape the killing fields around Falaise had been forced back to the Rhine and beyond, to the Elbe.

But for the Luftwaffe Jagdgruppen defending the daylight skies of the Greater German Reich there was nowhere to retreat to. They stood their ground and traded the US heavy bombers blow for blow. And the outcome, far from being a foregone conclusion, would hang in the balance for many months. It was to be almost a full year before the growing weight of American superiority — not least in the sleek cruciform shape of the P–51 Mustang escort fighter — began to tell irrevocably against them. But even then another year and more of desperately fought actions was to pass before they too were finally and conclusively beaten.