The Flight of the Condor.

The Flight of the Condor.
By Nitin Shirsekar

C o n t e n t s

Genesis of the Aircraft

Testing the Operational Capabilities

The Atlantic War

Restricted role after D Day landings

The End

The Atlantic War

Kapitan ‘Vaan Clef Schroeder’ gripped the control yoke with one hand as he sipped a cup of steaming coffee.
His Copilot was a blonde lad of twenty called Jurgen Schumann who looked frightfully young to be piloting such a massive aircraft. A much decorated veteran Jurgen’s youthful looks belied his capabilities in the cockpit.
The navigator, seated in his console behind the pilots was a middle aged Swabian from Dresden. With a receding hairline, he was the father of two beautiful young daughters who lived at the edge of the Black Forest.
They were happy…the flight crew sitting on the flight deck…as the FW 200 aircraft sailed over the endless expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean.
The four engined Focke Wulf FW 200 ‘Condor’ of the Luftwaffe was a massive aircraft for its time. With a wingspan exceeding 108 feet it equaled the span of a modern day Boeing 737-100. The four, nine cylinder “BMW/Bramo” air cooled radial engines generated a lift equivalent to that of a small jet aircraft. Though it lacked speed, the FW 200 had an endurance of more than 12 hours in the air and was a front line long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft of the Luftwaffe. The cockpit & crew positions had excellent all around vision. There was a gunner/observer positions in the middle upper, middle lower and rear lower areas of the aircraft providing for all round surveillance. It was a beautifully engineered aircraft with several features that were advanced for its time
As the crew went about their duties their reverie was suddenly shattered by a burst of machine gun fire.
The Condor was designed as a civilian aircraft and not built to withstand the rigors of aerial warfare.
The steel jacketed 0.50 caliber rounds punched through the Condors thin aluminum skin tearing into the cockpit, gouging out the instruments and fittings mounted on the inner surface and seeking the soft bodies of the flight crew.
The navigator suddenly jerked and fell forward…a 0.50-inch caliber bullet tearing through his larynx…severing the jugular vein.
Fresh arterial blood spurted in crimson gouts across the navigator table splattering the map of the North Atlantic before him with red splotches.
His cry was strangled as he opened his mouth.
“Hilfe…’ he moaned, the life blood pouring from him.
The young co pilot turned towards the now threshing figure.
His eyes widened in horror at the sight of the navigator clutching his throat, blood spurting between the fingers.
‘Himmel..He called to his captain. ‘Karl is hit…’
Attend to him…I have the aircraft’ he said.
Juregen’s hands were moist in the coldness of the aircraft, as he tore at his harness, his mind struggling to comprehend the nature of assistance he could provide his mortally wounded comrade.
He realised the wound would be fatal and that they were too far from their home base to turn around. A man could die unless he received specialized attention.
He automatically grasped at the first aid kit from the shelf near the cockpit door as his eyes searched for the damage caused by the bullet.
His blood turned cold as he saw that the entire left side of the throat was gone.
Already the navigator was axhirapating from lack of oxygen.
Death was only minutes away.
The thought of his being unable to render any kind of physical assistance sickened him.
There was nothing he could do in the icy cold of the cockpit at a height of 15,000 feet above the Atlantic.
From the Perspex window beyond the navigator’s position he saw the enemy aircraft. An American made single seat ‘Martlet’ of the Royal Navy.
It was coming in for a second attack.
The navigator was now threshing, in his death throes…
'Man the weapons...', screamed his Captain, as he banked the aircraft to port into the diving British Fighter.
Jurgen moved instinctively with an insistence born out of an insane desire to survive against all odds and burst into the waist gunners position.
Sighting the stubby shilloute of the Royal Navy fighter through the ringed spider web sight he pressed the trigger holding the shilloute dead center.
The weapon jerked and threshed as he kept his aim...fingers glued to the trigger.
Tracer and ball rounds formed an unbroken arc towards the Martlet, which suddenly broke off trailing smoke and bits of metal.
Loosing height the Royal Navy fighter dipped towards the sea.
'We have him....Herr Kapitan...' Jurgen called into the intercom. 'He is ditching...' he said after a pause.
‘Damage report’ called Captain Van Celff as he straightened the Condor and fought to regain altitude.
Damage reports were minimal.
Engine temperature, oil pressure, fuel flow were all ‘OK’. The BMW radials continued their rhythm uninterrupted.
They had escaped lightly. ‘Our lucky day’ thought Van Celff.
‘‘That was a Royal Navy Martlet. Ship Launched’ called Jurgen.
‘There’s a convoy in the vicinity….’
‘Roger that’ repeated Kapitan Vaan Clef, nodding briefly.
‘Get a fix on the position and inform base about the convoy.’ he ordered the Radio Operator.
‘Tell them about the ditching Tommy pilot and have them pick him up.
It could be our asses out there one day and I want the Kriegsmarine air/sea on the ball‘. He added.
Vaan Clef pictured a frail looking dingy in the heaving ocean, thousands of feet below, with a sodden pilot looking skywards for deliverance that sometimes never came.
The Atlantic was unforgiving on friend and foe alike.
A floating graveyard, the flotsam of war marked its tombstones - German, American and British alike. Empty Mae West life preservers, partly submerged dinghies, deflated barrage balloons, derelict rescue floats with faded red crosses on either side, broken and blackened timber beams, oil slicks with objects bobbing in their sticky viscous embrace –a canvas bucket, papers of type scrip, cork jackets, ropes.
No trace remained of the men who had once used these apparatus. Only the dark depths of the Atlantic held their secret.
He shuddered involuntarily at the though and pushed it away from his mind as he concentrated on flying the Condor.
‘Condor 217’to Base’….Repeat….’Condor 217’to Base’…. tapped out the radio operator, his skilled fingers keying in the latest events.
The message relayed through a high powered wireless antennae somewhere on the coast of France was flashed towards the underground command center at Brest.
The reply was immediate and brief.
‘Acknowledged…Condor 217’. Continue patrol….Good Luck ! Over and Out’….
They were trying times for Germany.
The Battle for the North Atlantic was critical and Admiral Dontiz was unrelenting.
His brief to his Commanders was severe.
‘The sea bridge to the Americas must be broken. Failure will be a disaster for the Reich..’ he warned.
The high flying Focke Wulf FW200 Condors formed the air bridge of the U Boat High Command.
Serving as lookouts for allied convoys and radio communication platforms for U Boats deep at sea they provided Admiral Donitz with a round the clock surveillance of the North Atlantic.
With an operational area covering the Northern tip of the Shetland Islands, the Orkneys to Guernsey in the South and midway across the western seaboard towards America, the watery arc was too immense for conventional surveillance.
The Focke Wulf FW200’s of the Luftwaffe converted from their former airliner role were ideally suited for long range maritime reconnaissance.

***

Lieutenant Jurgen’s breathing was ragged as he dashed towards the navigator’s position.
His hands were clammy from the realization that it was already too late for their severely wounded comrade.
Jurgen’s apprehension was confirmed on seeing the slumped form of the navigator across the chart table.
‘Like a limp rag’ Jurgen thought.
‘The manner of departed comrades from previous battles’.
Jurgen cursed under his breath as he looked at his friends body.
‘Always the same. In the heat of combat, we die alone’.
Loud footfalls sounded behind him on the metal gangway.
The radio operator rushed in besides Jurgen his eyes widening at the sight before him.
There had been no time to aid the stricken navigator.
Amidst roaring gunfire, howling aero engines and an unforgiving ocean thousands of feet below, death could have come to any of them in a hundred different ways.
They had to fight to survive.
Death was easy.
The navigators right arm lay outstretched before him, palm upwards fingers splayed, as if besieging an invisible god.
The place smelt coppery.
The smell of death.
Dark arterial blood seeped in rivulets under the seat moving in tandem with the aircraft’s motion creating a macabre spider web of crimson and red across the navigation deck.
Bile bubbled in Jurgens throat acidic and bitter stinging its way up his nostrils.
The R/O stood by eyes rolling.
Jurgen steadied himself against the bulkhead.
Swallowing he muttered ‘Help me lay him down and cover him’.
His mouth tasted foul. ‘‘At least we can give him a decent burial.’
The rents gouged through the thin metal bulkhead by the steel jacket 0.50 calibre rounds reflected the light outside.
As the two men bent over the navigators body the Focke Wulf FW 200 shuddered from the turbulence as it entered the clouds.

Testing the Operational Capabilities

Summer of France 1940 :

The air was thick with the smell of freshly cut grass and shrubs.
Jurgen enjoyed the balmy weather as he lay on the close cropped grass adjoining the aircraft dispersal area.
His flight suit lay unbuttoned to the waist exposing the grey Luftwaffe uniform tunic and dark tie underneath.
A half smoked cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
A profusion of white cumulus clouds billowed against the pastel blue sky above with visibility stretching endlessly on either side of the airbase.
It was a perfect day for flying he mused.
Jurgen felt tranquil for the first time since his arrival at the airbase a month ago at ‘Rossieres en Santerre‘ near the coast of France .
Settling down quickly he had won the appreciation of his comrades and the attention of his superiors on numerous raids across the Channel.
The dark green Heinkel He111 flown by Jurgen stood with its ‘chocks on’ at the ready tarmac.
The fuselage bore the numbers ‘V4 AM’ in large lettering indicating his unit ‘4 Staffel KG1’ bomber squadron preceded by a large black Luftwaffe Knight’s Cross with white border outline.
The battle hardy Heinkel He111 with more than a thousand flying hours to its credit had the cowlings removed from its port engine. A couple of Luftwaffe mechanics on a gantry probed the innards of the liquid cooled BMW V-12 engine. The Heinkel would be readied in time for the squadrons next foray over the coast.
The stuttering roar of another BMW radial starting up nearby reached his ears.
Curious Jurgen rolled over on his elbow in time to watch the starting sequence of a Focke Wulf FW 200 belonging to the maritime reconnaissance command.
The big FW 200 dwarfed the Henkel He111 parked beside it. The rounded conical sweep of the nose and the smooth lines of its fuselage had a swanlike grace. The futuristic design had attracted several admirers amongst Allies and Axis alike.
The ground crews on the tarmac below the FW200 signaled the pilots seated high overhead in the cockpit, to start up engine number two.
The pilots in the FW 200’s ran through the checklists, moving levers and turning on numerous switches and knobs as the engine coughed and sputtered the propeller wind milling. One by one the BMWs burst into life in sequence from port to starboard with a puff of blue smoke and whirling propeller blades.
The BMW’s soon settled into a powerful synchronized roar that resounding over the area.
The FW 200 jerked forward as soon as its aft hatch was secured. The engine notes deepened as it lumbered on to the taxi way.
The sleek outlines of its fuselage and the livery shone in the morning sunlight.
‘I’ll like to fly that kite someday’ said Jurgen looking towards his Navigator/Bomb Aimer sitting in a chair nearby.
The Navigator wrinkled his forehead at the clamor of the passing FW200’s radial engines.
‘What a racket’ he murmured lowering the copy of the German movie magazine he was reading.
The Navigator/Bomb Aimer wore a grey flight suit with several map pockets on the limb areas similar to his pilot but had the trouser ends tucked loosely into fur lined flight boots that almost reached his knees.
‘I knew a Navigator once who had flown those big birds’ he said.
‘Went down over the Atlantic in January,‘43.’
He paused momentarily before continuing ‘These birds are really big I mean’
‘You can walk around anywhere inside without stooping. Flight hours are long though. You get aloft before daybreak and land only after dinner. And you piss several times a day out of a rubber necked tube.
He turned over a page of the magazine. ‘The man lost several pounds during the first few months of flight operations’.
‘Yeah’ said Jurgen spitting out a stem of grass he was chewing contemplatively. ‘Lean and fighting fit. For the Volk and the Fatherland’
‘That reminds me’ he said sitting up. ‘It’s time we grabbed ourselves some lunch.’

1800 Hrs ‘Rossieres en Santerre‘ Airbase :

The tannoy sounded loud and harsh, reverberating across the base.
‘Achtung ! Achtung ! rasped a metallic voice. ‘All flight personnel report to the briefing room’.
The announcement galvanized the air crews.
‘Der Tag’ had been announced by Herman Goering that day.
The Heinkel crews had heard him over the radio, as they stood solemnly in the mess taking in the brash, boastful words.
Pirouetting like a peacock before a battery of microphones the Generalfeldmarschall had delivered the speech that would have a devastating effect on millions of German and British lives in the air and on the ground.
Several hundred would never live to see the end of the week, as they went down in flames or blew up in fragments in the skies over England or drowned in the English Channel inside jammed cockpits and twisted fuselages or entangled inside their parachute shrouds.
But to the man making the announcement on the radio that morning it was pure rhetoric.
A Teutonic duel, of modern weapons. Pilot to Pilot. Aircraft to Aircraft.
For him it was back to the cocktail circuit, the award ceremonies, boar hunts and the magnificent estate at Carinhall.

Jurgen was drawn to the unfolding spectacle with awe and anguish.
They had become actors in a show scripted by the OKW General Staff with an outcome that was unknown.
His first operational flight had been over the Low Countries. Not much action there.
But the later flights over England had been sheer terror.
Tethered barrage balloons swaying in the breeze hanging on spider webs of spun steel, bloated and deadly waiting to tear the wings of an unsuspecting aircraft.
The constant thuds of anti aircraft shells exploding in red and orange flashes.
Smoke rising from fires ignited by incendiaries from the previous waves of Heinkels 111 and Junkers JU 87 Stukas.
The jerky movement of the aircraft as it rose and dipped to keep in formation.
But the sudden silence that followed when the anti aircraft guns 'stopped firing' was always unnerving.
It signaled the arrival of British fighters.
Skillfully vectored in by seasoned RAF controllers the Spitfires and Hurricanes came in like sharks scenting food.
‘Gunners keep a sharp look out’ the ‘Geschwader’ commander would shout over the radio crackling with static from British jamming stations below. ‘They will be here any second’.
Jurgens hands would turn moist from the anticipated attack as his eyes automatically scanned the instruments, gyro compass, altimeter and heading indicator.
The confines of the Heinkel 111’s ‘fully glazed’ cockpit suddenly felt vulnerable.
There was no floor beneath the pilots feet. The Rudder pedals, U shaped control wheel, levers and knobs were mounted on suspended arms above transparent Perspex panels. The Heinkels ‘fishbowl’ cockpit accorded very good visibility but afforded no protection to the flight crew seated in the nose cone. Many Heinkel 111 pilots and navigator / cum bombardier were maimed or grievously hurt due to poor cockpit protection.
Jurgen warily eyed the Perspex panels as he searched for enemy aircraft.
His heart almost stopped beating the first time he saw the Spitfires and Hurricanes streaking in.
Coming in at dizzying angles with their supercharged engines trailing vapor, yellow lights flashing from their wings as they spat.303 inch ball and incendiary rounds that glowed orange as they passed it was a scene from ‘Dante’s Nightmare’.
Returning fire from the Heinkel 111’s middle and nose gunners added to the crescendo as empty shell casings cascaded inside the aircraft.
The Heinkel 111 trembled with the hits from the striking bullets that left smoking holes as they passed through the metal skin.
A few barely missed him as they ricocheted around the cockpit.
Perspex frames cracked and shattered forming gaping holes through which the wind shrieked maniacally.
The ground crews had a huge task as the returning Heinkel 111s needed new Perspex cockpit panels replaced at short notice. Almost every one of the Heinkel 111 had been hit and needed to be worked upon.

Genesis of the Aircraft

General Erhard Milch, stood with his feet splayed as he gazed out through the plate glass windows of the Board Room of the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH factory in Bermen.
His brow furrowed with concentration as he pondered the recent deliberations with the factory management.
The immaculate grey suit, dark tie, carnation and glossy leather formals gave him the appearance of a wealthy banker rather than an overworked official, of the Reich Air Ministry.
Also present in the room were the Board Members, the Technical Heads of various departments and the Chief of Production of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH.
They sat in comfortable chairs around a circular table of polished maghony smoking and taking small sips of brandy from crystal decanters as they eyed the immaculate back of the General before the window.
Papers of typescript, calculations and slide rules lay on the table before them.
Blue smoke from their cigars rose in spirals as they spoke in soft voices,
A blonde female secretary in a tight black dress sat before a ‘Continental’ typewriter near the wall awaiting instructions from her employers.


The fabrication and assembly works of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau GmbH were visible below the plate glass windows.
Row upon row of gantries, pulleys and chains suspended by stout steel rails and aircraft of different shapes and sizes in various stages of completion met the eyes of the viewer.
Every square foot of the shop floor was taken up by an aircraft or its components.
Workers swarmed around the aircraft hurrying to meet the sharp deadlines placed by the German War Ministry.
The sounds of metallic hammers, electric drills and riveting machines never reached the ears of the distinguished members seated in the sound proofed room above.