by Dillon "Jazz" Poole

  SturmStaffel 1 soon adopted the baby-brother of the 'Sturmbock.' They used Fw190A-5s and A-6s and added 5 inch armor plating called Panzerplatten to critical areas of their aircraft. The unit also added 30mm glass panels to the side of the canopy and to the quarter-panels of the windscreen.

These new and heavier aircraft resulted in double the fuel consumption rate, and soon fuel drop tanks were added, further weighing down the new converted aircraft.

Armament on these early 'Sturmbocks' were the same as the normal FW190A5s and A6s.

Reich Defense

SturmStaffel 1 was among the first units to adopt Reich Defense (Reichsverteidigung) bands. These bands helped pilots distinguish each unit from the other. SturmStaffel 1 chose to adopt the black-white-black band scheme.

Sturm units would soon incorporate the new Fw190A8 and A9 versions into their units and along with the earlier modifications of Sturm aircraft, they soon also incorporated Rustsatze (Field Conversion Kits). The most numerous one used by the Sturm units was the R8 kit which equipped the Fw190A8 with armor glass and a Mk108 30mm cannon in the wing. The new 30mm cannons meant that bombers could be brought down with just a few well placed hits. But the it added still more weight, making the nimble Fw190 sluggish.

The Luftwaffe's Sturm units suffered tremendous losses from enemy escorts. SturmStaffel 1 alone suffered roughly 350% loss of pilots during its short time in the war. Yet the Sturm units were the most groups at bringing down the endless streams of 4-engined bombers that were devastating Germany by day.

The most successful 4-engined bomber killer, Walther Dahl, was in command of JG300, of which there was a Gruppen (group) and Geschwaderstab (wing staff) of Fw190A8/A9s (R-2 and R-8 variants) that were used in Sturm-style attacks quite successfully. Walther Dahl went on to score at least 36 confirmed 4-engined bombers.

Click to continue

For many years people believed that some of the rammings by German pilots were accidental or were a personal thing the pilot did out of desperation. Occasionally this could have been the case, but the pilots of the Sturm were tasked to ram a bomber if necessary; it was what they signed up for and it is what they agreed to do if firepower alone could not do the job.

Lost in History

It is amazing how little information has come out of Germany about the Sturm units. The book "Flying School: Combat Hell" (by Ellis M. Woodward, Copyright 1998) has many letters to the author from American servicemen that served on the 4-engined bombers.

"....,we exchanged experiences with each other, and it turned out that he was a bombardier in 445th Bombardment Group. This was the Group that was decimated by a LUFTWAFFE STORM GROUP on September 27, 1944. His entire squadron had been shot down and he was a prisoner of war for more then 8 months.

"Now 50 years later he still had never heard of the existence of the LUFTWAFFE STORM GROUPS.......the atack on the 445th BG on September 27, 1944 resulted in the loss of the greatest number of 4-engined bombers by a single Bombardment Group on a single mission in the history of the Eighth Air Force." - Ellis Woodward, 493rd BG

"the attack lasted less than two minutes, and when we looked around, only two of the twelve B-17s remained in formation. The other 10 had disappeared, as if by magic. What had hit us on that fateful day was a LUFTWAFFE STORM GROUP, but I didn't learn of the existence of the STORM GROUPS until 49 years later." - Jimmy Stewart

The story of the Sturm units is a short but yet a mysterious one. The units served with incredible bravery for the simple fact that they were defending their homes. They weren't thinking about keeping the Third Reich alive (with some exceptions, but that's another article), they were thinking of the "terror bombers" wreaking havoc on their homes and the people that lived there.

They regarded themselves as an elite group of pilots, and they were. Unfortunately, note many people know their history, let alone that they existed.

Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.