The air battle over the Ore Mountains

Around midday on Monday 11 September 1944, over the crest of the Ore Mountains – the range on the border between Saxony and Bohemia – one of the fiercest air battles of the autumn of 1944 took place. German fighters attacked a formation of American heavy bombers heading for the synthetic fuel plant at Ruhland before its planned fighter escort had joined it. Within a few minutes more than a dozen Flying Fortresses went down. When the American Mustangs arrived, the roles were reversed: the young, poorly trained German pilots suffered heavy losses, and the remaining bombers reached their target. Wreckage from aircraft of both sides fell on villages and small towns on both sides of the mountains, above all around Schmiedeberg, today the Czech municipality of Kovářská. In Germany the battle is sometimes called “Black Monday over the Ore Mountains” (Schwarzer Montag über dem Erzgebirge).

Popular chronologies present it as an engagement in which, after German attacks on the bomber formation, the Mustangs “accompanying” it tied up the German fighters in combat. The general picture is accurate but needs refining: over the Ore Mountains the American escort was in fact late. The bombers, which were to rendezvous with the Mustangs over the crest of the mountains, were at that moment flying without cover, and that is why the first blow was so effective. The main fighting, moreover, took place over the Czech side of the range, then incorporated into the Reich as the Reichsgau Sudetenland.

The oil offensive

Germany had no large oil deposits of its own. Fuel for the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe came from imports – above all from the Romanian oilfields around Ploiești – and from a dozen or so large plants that produced synthetic petrol from coal by hydrogenation or by the Fischer–Tropsch process. Almost all German aviation fuel came from these plants. They were located mainly in central Germany, Lusatia, the Ruhr, Silesia, at Police (Pölitz) and in the lignite basin of northern Bohemia.

On 12 May 1944, as part of the pre-invasion bombing, the US Eighth Air Force struck the synthetic fuel plants in strength for the first time. On 8 June, two days after the Normandy landings, the commander of the US Strategic Air Forces in Europe, General Carl Spaatz, issued an order making the denial of fuel to the German armed forces the primary strategic objective of both air forces under his command – the Eighth in England and the Fifteenth in Italy. The Americans in Italy bombed Ploiești, and after the coup in Romania on 23 August the Reich lost Romanian oil altogether. Apart from smaller deposits in Hungary and Austria, the burden of supply now rested on the synthetic plants, and these were bombed again and again as soon as air reconnaissance showed that they had resumed production.

According to the official history of the US Army Air Forces, USSTAF estimated German fuel output in September 1944 at 32 per cent of its pre-offensive level; later, more accurate data indicated 23 per cent, and even less in the case of petrol. Armaments Minister Albert Speer warned Hitler in successive memoranda that the Luftwaffe would soon run out of fuel. Fighter pilot training was cut to a few weeks because there was no fuel for the training aircraft – and it was pilots like these who on 11 September were to defend the plants against the bombers.

Mission 623

On the morning of 11 September the day’s largest strategic bombing operation took off from airfields in eastern England; in the Eighth Air Force’s records it is designated Mission No. 623. The air force, commanded by General James Doolittle, dispatched 1,131 heavy bombers and some 440 escort fighters – according to the US official history, every one of its fighter groups. The targets were the synthetic fuel plants at Ruhland in Lusatia, at Böhlen near Leipzig, at Leuna near Merseburg, at Lützkendorf, Misburg and Magdeburg, and at Záluží near Most (German Brüx) in the Sudetenland, as well as engine works in Hanover and a military vehicle factory in Chemnitz. The strike on Chemnitz was also part of Operation Frantic: after dropping their bombs, 75 Flying Fortresses and 64 Mustangs flew on east to bases in Ukraine.

The BRABAG plant at Ruhland-Schwarzheide was target No. 7. It was assigned to the 100th Bomb Group, stationed at Thorpe Abbotts in Norfolk – a unit that, because of its heavy earlier losses, bore the nickname “the Bloody Hundredth”. The group put up 36 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from four squadrons. It flew in from the west at high altitude over central Germany, initially without close escort; over the crest of the Ore Mountains it was to be joined by North American P-51 Mustang fighters of the 55th and 339th Fighter Groups.

The Luftwaffe had been conserving its strength for weeks. After its heavy losses in the spring, during Big Week and the later battles over the Reich, and after its fighter units had been bled white over Normandy, German fighters rarely gave battle in large numbers. On 11 September it was different: according to the US official history, for the first time since 28 May the Luftwaffe came up in great strength against a full-scale raid, and the bomber crews sighted some 400 German fighters. According to American estimates some 25 jet aircraft also appeared – a weapon that had first gone into combat in July – which could easily outrun the Mustangs but on this occasion avoided combat.

The “Sturmgruppe” attack

Against the formation heading for Ruhland the Germans scrambled some 60 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters of II and III Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 4 from the airfields of Alteno and Welzow in Lusatia. II Gruppe was one of the Luftwaffe’s few “Sturmgruppen” – units specialising in destroying heavy bombers. It had been formed in July 1944 at Salzwedel from a former heavy fighter group and part of Sturmstaffel 1 under Major Hans-Günter von Kornatzki, the originator of this tactic. Its pilots flew the Fw 190A-8/R2, fitted with additional armour and armed with heavy cannon. They attacked in close formation from astern at very short range, counting on the armour to protect them from the fire of the bombers’ gunners. The Bf 109s of III Gruppe were to cover them against American fighters. The heavy, unwieldy “assault” Focke-Wulfs were dangerous to bombers but defenceless against Mustangs.

The first clash took place at around 11.40 a.m. over Thuringia, south of Oberhof, where some of the German and American fighters became engaged. Six Germans and two Americans were killed; the body of one of the latter, the American airman William Lewis, was found only in 2002 after a long search.

The main battle then unfolded east of the Fichtelberg, over the Czech side of the Ore Mountains. The area had until then seen almost nothing of the war. Over Schmiedeberg, Jagdgeschwader 4 struck the bombers of the 100th Group before the Mustangs arrived, catching them in the middle of a long flight. In a very short time it shot down more than a dozen B-17s and damaged others; according to various tallies the Americans lost 13 or 14 bombers in this attack, and the neighbouring 95th Bomb Group also came under fire. Four Fortresses exploded and fell in flames in and around Schmiedeberg. One of them, Boss Lady, broke up in the air, and its tail fell onto the roof of a girls’ school during lessons and lodged there. Other bombers crashed around Crottendorf, Neudorf, Tellerhäuser and Gottesgab, today’s Boží Dar.

Then the Mustangs of the 55th and 339th Fighter Groups reached the mountains. They attacked the German fighters aggressively, breaking up their formations and giving the remaining bombers a chance to escape. On the German side most of the pilots were young and inexperienced, and for many of them it was their first combat sortie. According to figures cited in German and Czech literature, Jagdgeschwader 4 lost 37 fighters in the whole battle, and the American escort four P-51s. The wrecks of the fighters were scattered even more widely than the bomber wreckage – several each around Schmiedeberg and Vejprty (German Weipert), as well as near Bärenstein, Zschopau, Reitzenhain and other places on both sides of the border. The surviving B-17s reached Ruhland and dropped 53 tons of bombs on the plant at Schwarzheide.

Losses and remembrance

The sources agree on the aircraft losses of the battle over the Ore Mountains and Thuringia but differ on the human toll. The Americans lost 19 aircraft – 15 B-17G bombers and 4 P-51D fighters – and the Germans 37 fighters: 18 Fw 190As and 19 Bf 109Gs. According to German and Czech literature, 50–53 Americans were killed and 54 taken prisoner. The number of German pilots killed is given as 21–29, and of seriously wounded as 9–11.

The whole of Mission 623 was one of the costliest of that autumn for both sides. According to the US official history, some 125 German fighters broke through the escort that day and shot down 20 heavy bombers, losing – according to American claims – 97 aircraft. Eighth Air Force figures speak of a total of 40 bombers lost (including to anti-aircraft fire) and 17 fighters, with more than a hundred German aircraft claimed shot down in the air and several dozen destroyed on the ground. As usual in the air war, the claims of both sides were inflated. According to the same sources, the synthetic plants at Ruhland, Böhlen, Brüx, Leuna, Lützkendorf, Misburg and Magdeburg were seriously damaged. The next day, 12 September, 888 bombers struck Ruhland, Brüx, Magdeburg, Böhlen and Misburg again, and once more met strong opposition.

For a long time the battle remained a local memory in the border villages. From 1985 its course was reconstructed by a group of aviation history enthusiasts from Kovářská led by Jan Zdiarský, who found many of the crash sites and made contact with veterans. On 13 September 1997 the Museum of the Air Battle over the Ore Mountains (Muzeum letecké bitvy nad Krušnohořím) was opened in Kovářská in the presence of veterans of both sides and families of the fallen. The street on which the museum stands is named after Albert E. Trommer, the pilot of the bomber whose tail fell on the school, and the local primary school after Sergeant J.C. Kluttz, the ball turret gunner who was the only member of his crew to survive the crash. Since the 50th anniversary of the battle, international commemorations of the victims have been held there every year.

Place in the war

The battle over the Ore Mountains illustrates well what the air war over the Reich looked like in the autumn of 1944. The Luftwaffe could still muster several hundred fighters and deal a painful blow, especially when it found a formation without cover. It could not, however, win a war of attrition: every such day cost it dozens of pilots whom it had no means of replacing, while American losses in aircraft and men were made good within a few weeks. The Sturmgruppe tactic proved effective against bombers, but without its own fighter cover it led to heavy losses among the attackers themselves.

The oil offensive continued until the spring of 1945. The synthetic plants were rebuilt with great effort, including by forced labourers and prisoners, but successive raids destroyed them before they could return to full production. The shortage of fuel increasingly hampered both the Luftwaffe and the German armoured forces, which mattered during the December offensive in the Ardennes and in the last months of the war.

At about the same time (9–11 September), as the US official history noted, the Soviet authorities finally agreed to a shuttle mission under Operation Frantic to bring help to embattled Warsaw. On 18 September more than a hundred Flying Fortresses dropped containers of weapons and supplies over the city; most of them, however, fell in areas held by the Germans.