Hermann Neumann Interview

[KG_Cloghaun]

Luftwaffe Ace Hermann Neumann

Interview by Ed McCaul



Stuka is a contraction of the word Sturzkamphfflugzeug, which simply means dive bomber. But it has become inextricably linked with one airplane - the Junkers Ju-87.
The Ju-87A first became operational in early 1937 and was extensively tested in the Spanish Civil War. During the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, Ju-87B's constituted and essential component of the successful blitzkrieg tactics, providing accurate close air support for the German army. However, when faced with determined air opposition in the Battle of Britain, the Sturzkampfgeschwader (dive-bomber wings) suffered heavy losses and had to be withdrawn from the campaign. Even so, the Ju-87B was still the Luftwaffe's principal ground-support aircraft when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Later Ju-87D ground-support Stukas were modified with crew armor, 37mm cannon packs and a larger engine to produce the Ju-87G, a Panzerknacker (tank buster) variant. One of the earliest Stuka pilots to serve in a specialized tank-destroying Staffel, or squadron, was Hermann Neumann. In an interview with Ed McCaul, Neumann described some of his 368 combat missions, during which he was credited with destroying 68 Russian tanks and was recommended for the Ritterkreuz (Knight's Cross).

Military History: Where in Germany are you from?

Neumann: I was born in 1922 in the Sudetenland, which became part of Czechoslovakia when that republic was created in 1919. We lived in a little town called Romerstadt in peace with the Czechs until about 1937; then things changed. In our town of about 5,000 people they put about 50 secret policemen. They started putting Germans in camps from which some never returned. We were very happy when the German army came in October 10, 1938. For us it was very personal. One man who was a professor at our high school and wrote for a German cultural magazine, with a specialty of gardening, was arrested with his two sons. They were only given rotten cabbage leaves to eat, so he had to run to the toilet. On his third trip to the toilet the guards, who were no military but civilians, clubbed him to death in from of his two sons.

MH: When did you join the Luftwaffe?

Neumann: I enlisted in 1940 when I was 17 years old, but had to wait in 1941 before I could join. I was basically all alone, since my father had died in 1934, my mother had died in February 1940, two of my three brothers were in the army and one of my two sisters had emigrated to the United States. Both of my brothers died in Russia. I wanted to be in the Luftwaffe and fly, so I enlisted because if you were drafted you did not know where you would end up. Prior to joining the Luftwaffe I had to spend two months in an Arbeitsdienst Abteilung, or Labor Service unit, starting in March 1941. The was a premilitary outfit who symbol was the spade. The in May I started boot camp with the Luftwaffe.

MH: Why did you pick the Luftwaffe?

Neumann: I had done training before in one of the glider clubs in 1939. I had gotten a taste for flying and loved it.

MH: Did you go directly into pilot's training?

Neumann: No, first we had to complete boot camp, which was infantry training. It was about three months long. Then we had to complete Unteroffizier, or sergeant's training school, which lasted two months. The purpose of this school was to make us into leaders. After all that was completed we went to flight school. I was still a private when I started flying school. When I finished all my training, I was the equivalent of corporal and alter became a sergeant.

MH: Where was the flight school located?

Neumann: It was in Olmutz in Czechoslovakia. The airfield that we flew out of was located about 20 miles away in Prerau.

MH: How long was flight school?

Neumann: The entire training took two years. I did not finish all of my training until October 1943. The name of my outfit was 1041, since we started in October 1941. The basic light training lasted a little over one year. The second year was more advanced training.

MH: That was a long time for a flight school with a war going on.

Neumann: Actually not, at this time it was the regular length of time to train a pilot. My first plane was a biplane, the Hienkel He-72 Kadett. The I went on to the Bucker Bu-131 Jungmann, the Bu-133 Jungmeister and the Bu-181 Bestmann. By the time I had finished my training I had flown about 35 different types of airplanes.

MH: How did the Luftwaffe decide what you would fly after you had finished your training?

Neumann: This depended upon what you wanted to do. They would ask you if you wanted to be a fighter or a bomber pilot. If you wanted to be a bomber pilot, which I did not want to be, you went into the so called "C+" training. We were in the AB24 school at Olmutz. The "A" stood for basic flight training where you made your solo. The "B" meant training in heavier aircraft to include two-engine aircraft with retractable gear, navigational and instrument flying. The "C" training went into such advanced skills as radio and astronomical navigation. I decided that I wanted to be a Stuka pilot. This was my ideal plane.

MH: Why did you want to fly the Stuka?

Neumann: Why does someone want to drive a Harley Davidson? The Stuka was a myth in the Luftwaffe at this time. I did not was to be a C pilot flying a bomber. To me that was too much like a bus driver. Some people like to drive a bus and some people like to drive a crash car. The Stuka was a crash car. It had a feeling of something special.

MH: Did you realize that by that time in the war the Stuka was considered obsolete?

Neumann: Yes, but it as not obsolete for the Eastern front. You have to remember that when I started out in 1941 it was a very special airplane.

MH: Where did you go for second year of training?

Neumann: First, I went to Reims for a couple of weeks and then to Paris in March of '43. I did not finish there until October. While I was there I flew the ground-support Henschel H-129. I also got a chance to fly a captured North American P-51 Mustang and sit in the right hand seat of a Boeing B-17. I did not get to actually fly the B-17 but did get to fly in it. After Paris I went to Poland for more training and then to Yugoslavia, southwest of Belgrade. It was there that I first got to fly the Stuka. It was only training. We learned how to bomb. I was there for about 2 months. After that I went to Russia.

MH: When did you actually get to a fighting unit?

Neumann: It was in December 1943. The unit I joined in Russia was a special unit designated as 10 (Pz)/SG.1 [10th Staffel (Panzer)/Schlachtgeschwader 1] Our commander had the rank of the next higher unit, a group commander. We were a tank-hunting unit and were sent from place to place. Our Stukas were armed with the two 37mm gun. We also did standard bombing missions in addition to tank hunting. We were all over the front from the Baltic down to the Crimea.

MH: Did you volunteer for this unit or just get assigned to it?

Neumann: I volunteered. It was the sort of mission I wanted.

MH: Did you ever meet Lt. Col. Hans-Ulrich Rudel?

Neumann: No, I never personally met him but I am sure that we flew on the same missions. He was a legend among Stuka pilots.

MH: How much ammunition did each cannon hold?

Neumann: Each one held 12 rounds. The ammunition was specially made to go through 4 to 5 inches of steel.

MH: How many tanks did you destroy?

Neumann: I got 68 tanks. I got about 30 with bombs and the rest with the cannons.

MH: What was your favorite method of attacking the tanks?

Neumann: It depended. The T-34 had sloping armor so we had to attack it from a high angle and then it was like cheesecake. So for the T-34, from the front was best. I considered the Joseph Stalin the toughest. We first met them around the end of 1944. It had some special armor on it. On top of its regular armor it had some metal studs with some light armor plate attached to it. Our ammunition would not actually hit through but melt through. Thus, when it would hit the light armor it would melt through it but would not be able to melt through the main armor.

MH: How would you attack a Stalin?

Neumann: The Stalin you could only hit between the turret and the body. They did not have the secondary armor there. One guy from our unit was shot down in January 1945, and the infantry had one that had been knocked out so, he got a chance to inspect it. After that, we readjusted our guns to 100 meters. Before that they had been adjusted to 400 meters. We had to go down very low in order to hit the Stalin at the right spot. It was a very small target.

MH: How much danger was there at 100 meters if the tank would blow up? Would you not have to fly through the debris?

Neumann: After we fired out cannons, we would go to the right or left, but we did not directly fly over the tank. One time a Sergeant Ott was shooting at a Russian Klimenti Voroshilov KV-2 heavy tank that was in between a farm house and a barn. The KV-2 had a big square turret and heavy armor. Ott went down and shot but nothing happened. So he said, "OK, if it does not explode I will make so many holes in it that it will not be any good anymore!" So he went down again and when he was very close to the tank it exploded. The turret flew over his canopy. When we got back to the base he was shaking and kept saying, "I saw the turret over the top of my canopy!"

MH: How low would you have to fly to destroy a tank?

Neumann: For the Stalin we had to fly at 20 or 30 feet...(at) about 300 kilometers per hour. We would be flying that low for maybe five to 10 seconds. If you got them in your sights you only really needed a second or two. Remember, for the Stalin, our guns were adjusted for 100 meters. So, we had to get close to them.

MH: How was the morale in the unit when you arrived in December 1943?

Neumann: It was fine. We knew for what we were fighting. Ever tank I destroyed was one less tank that could possibly get to Germany. It was a fight to the end.

MH: What was your casualty rate?

Neumann: Not real high when I first got there. We had a lot of crashes, but most of the guys were able to land behind German lines. The Stuka was a solid aircraft. Late on some of the guys in the unit went to the Focke Wulf Fw-190F, which was armed with rockets, and they took some heavy casualties. I had trained on the Fw-190 in December and January 1944, but I always go to go back to the Stuka. With the Stuka we had the best success in tank hunting. The Stuka was slow but this allowed us to approach a tank at a slow speed, and it gave us time to aim and hit it.

MH: How dangerous was ground fire?

Neumann: In the end most of the Russian tanks towed a four-barrel anti-aircraft gun. When we would attack them, the tank crew would get out and man the gun. It was no problem fighting one tank with our two guns, but when there were 50 tanks there would be a lot of guns firing at us. I was shot down six times. I was able to crash my plane within German lines every time. The Stuka was a front-line plane, we were always close to German lines. That was why I was able to get my 368 missions in a short period of time. Some of our missions where only 20 minutes long. The first time I crashed was in March 1944. I had the oldest, slowest plane in the unit. It was a Ju-87B-2 and everyone else had newer models. I was shot down by Russian anti-aircraft fire. I was first hit in my left wing and then my motor. Luckily, I was able to fly the plane back into German lines. I saw a nice spot to land behind our infantry but in front of our artillery. As I came in for a landing I saw and artillery bunker and had to put the brakes on. This caused my plane to go up on it's nose. I quickly jumped out since the plane caught on fire. My navigator was so nervous he could not get his canopy open. I went back for him and reached in and pulled on his canopy's quick release. The only injury we suffered were minor burns. One of the other planes from our squadron flew off. It took us three days to get back to the unit. On the way back we were picked up by General Ferdinant Schorner. He was well known for making surprise visits to units and taking anybody he found that he believed was not necessary to that unit and putting them in the infantry.

MH: Did Schorner live up to his draconian reputation?

Neumann: On the way back to the airfield General Schorner said that we should be in the infantry since we did not have any gasoline and could not fly. I told him that without gasoline we would not have been shot down. I also pointed out to him that I could do a better job of destroying tanks with my Stuka than with a rifle. He agreed and drove us to the front gate of our airfield. They saw us coming, and our commanding officer greeted Schorner and said that the unit was ready for inspection. Everyone was very nervous because of Schorner's reputation. However, his driver took our parachutes out of the car, the general shook our hands, waved to our commander and left. Everyone at the airfield was very relieved. The next mission I went on I attacked the anti-aircraft unit that shot me down. However, this time we attacked them from and altitude of 5,000 meters, which was much higher than normal attacking altitude. They were laid out with the four guns in an X and the command section was in the center. I was armed with a regular bomb and some cluster bombs. It was a successful attack.

MH: Did you ever use your parachute?

Neumann: Never, even though I wanted to during my second crash. We were not taught how to parachute since they expected us to bring the plane back. I learned that the best way to crash a plane was to have it land sideways so that the wheels broke off first. I never used the switch that we had that would blow the undercarriage away. I used the wheels as brakes. The technique worked very well and I became pretty good at it.

MH: Were any of your gunners killed or wounded?

Neumann: Just once, the second time I was shot down. He was my first gunner. It was actually his mistake that we got shot down. We hit the target with our bombs and we were flying back home very low at about 15 or 20 feet. Our fighter escort at this time was some Fw-190's. Most of the Fw-190's were flown by young, inexperienced guys, so they would normally stay on the German side of the lines and wait for us to return. There was a Russian outfit called Stalin's Disciples. They were students from universities who had sworn to fight for Stalin. They flew the Lavochkin La-5, and from the front it looked like an Fw-190. After we had gotten back over German lines, my navigator said: "Now we have our escort again. There is a Focke Wulf right behind me." I said: "They're not allowed to fly like that behind us. They should know it, but they are young guys. Shoot one burst in front of his nose so that he will go away." My navigator said, "If I do that I will hit him for sure!" So he did not shoot. Because of that the La-5 got within 200 to 300 feet behind us and opened fire. His first burst shot up the gas line and hit the gas tank. I had gas everywhere in the cockpit and it exploded and put me on fire. In order to bail out you needed at least 1,000 feet to open the parachute. I was able to pull up to about 1,000 feet and put the plane on its side. I saw my navigator hanging on the side wall. So, I said, "Jump!" but I never knew if he jumped because I was close to passing out. I got out of my seatbelt and stood up, but the gas behind me exploded and since my parachute was now on fire decided not to jump. I put my right foot on the left rudder and put the airplane into a slip. I do not remember a lot of that because I passed out. Since was canopy was busted and I was not strapped in, the impact threw me clear of the plane. All of this happened about nine o'clock in the morning. I lay in the field until around seven o'clock that evening when the infantry found me. I was not sure who they were at first so I pulled my pistol out and was ready to shoot myself because the Russians did not treat captured pilots very nicely. We had found dead pilots tied to trees with metal burn marks on them.

MH: How long were you in the hospital after that?

Neumann: First I went to a hospital near Konigsberg in East Prussia. I had burns on about 65% of my body, and cracked spine, a cracked skull, and my left knee was busted up. I was on the second floor and wrapped up like a mummy. I was so bandaged up that I could only drink out of a straw. We were bombed by the Russians the second night I was there. We were only about 100 meters from the railroad stations, so when one bomb hit the hospital and started a fire a lot of other bombs started being dropped on us. One bomb hit just outside of the hospital and blew a heavy oak door of its hinges. The door landed on top of my bed and was held up by the bed's metal frame. Another bomb hit the room behind me and blew the wall on top of the door. Again, I was very lucky. I rolled out of the bed and using my elbows crawled to the steps, made a push and slid down. I kept crawling and sliding until I made it to the basement. The hospital was destroyed, so we were moved from there to Magdeburg. There the doctor was thinking about cutting off my left leg, but I did not let him. In October they needed more beds so I offered my bed. The doctor told me that I was crazy, but a half hour later he came back and asked me if I was serious. I told him that I was and so he release me. I was shot down on July 24, 1944, and did not leave the hospital until October 3.

MH: Did you go right back to the fighting?

Neumann: No, there was a recovery group where all the pilots from the hospital would come to before they went back to their units. We had to go before a doctor who determined if we were capable of going back to flying. The first doctor I saw said no, but the next day there was a different doctor. This doctor was a pilot, and I was able to convince him to allow me to fly. On December 1, I was back with my outfit even though I still had to use a can to walk.

MH: Where were they located when you got back?

Neumann: They were in East Prussia in Schippenbeil. We moved a lot because we were a special unit. It was there that we got our training on the Fw-190. Then after we were finished with the training, we went back to our Stukas and flew some missions from there. Since our squadron of nine Stukas was destroying more tanks than any other unit its size, it was hard for them to justify having us fly another type of plane.

MH: Four days before you were shot down, a bomb attempt was made on Adolf Hitlers life. Did you hear about it, and so, what did you think of it?

Neumann: Oh yes, we heard about it. I thought that they were crazy. You have to remember that I was just a sergeant and not involved in politics. I just could not understand why anyone would want to kill the leader of our country.

MH: When did you realize that Germany could not win the war?

Neumann: It was around the end of '44 or the beginning of '45. It was just a miracle that could save Germany at that time.

MH: What did you hear about the "wonder" weapons?

Neumann: Oh, we heard but were always kept waiting. We did have some, like the V-1 pulse-jet glider bomb, the V-2 rocket bomb and the Messerchmitt Me-262 jet fighter.

MH: Were you aware of the concentration camps?

Neumann: Oh yes, we know about them. But the really bad things did not start until way into the war. We did not know what was really going on in them. Our understanding was that the camps were being used to isolate dangerous people.

MH: What did you do to get your various medals?

Neumann: After 20 missions I got the Iron Cross 2nd Class and after 50 or 60 missions I got the Iron Cross 1st Class, which I received when I was in the hospital in Magdeburg. Later I got the German Cross in Gold, which is in between the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Knight's Cross, for destroying 60 tanks. It was an interim award while was waiting for my Knight's Cross. My paperwork had been put in for the Knight's Cross, but I never received it.

MH: How long did it take you to destroy 60 Russian tanks?

Neumann: I had maybe 30 tanks to my credit when I went into the hospital. So I got most of them from December '44 on. The last part of the war in the north the Russians had tanks everywhere. Our unit destroyed 20 to 30 tanks every day, just using the Stuka. It was a tank cemetery up there. But it would seem that the next day they would have 50 new ones. We stopped counting the number of tanks we destroyed. One time I destroyed three tanks in one pass. It was really an accident. The three tanks were lined up in a village and I lined up with the rear one. My captain came in from the side. I opened fire on the last and destroyed it but my guns would not stop firing, so I lined up on the next one, destroyed it, and then lined up on the front one and destroyed it also. My captain was pleased but upset because every time he would line up on a tank I would destroy it.

MH: Why did you not have navigator on your last mission?

Neumann: They asked for volunteers for a special mission. They wanted pilots and did not need navigators. I was at an air base north of Berlin. They told us that the Russian army was on the east side of the OderRiver. They wanted to assemble a group of pilots who would destroy the rest of the permanent bridges across the Order from the Czech border to the Baltic Sea. So, stupid as I was, I volunteered along with Lieutenant Hans Lenz. We both went to an airport near Juterbog, which is near Altes Lager.

MH: I thought that the German armor destroyed all the permanent bridges across the Oder?

Neumann: No, they had not. After we got to the airfield we were treated like kings. We got chocolates and all sorts of food. There were 50 of us. They told us that if the Russian armies started across the OderRiver that we were to knock out the bridges to stop them.

MH: The bridges were permanent bridges, not pontoon bridges?

Neumann: That is correct. We were the only ones flying Stukas, so everyone else's planes were rigged so that as soon as their bombs dropped they were armed. Our Stukas were still rigged so that the bombs had to fall quite some distance before they were armed. So, as soon as they switched on the power on to their planes their bombs would be hot. The reason was that most of all the other pilots were flying Messerschmitt Me-109's and Fw-190s and they were going to fly into the bridges....The strange thing is that I've never read about this mission anywhere. The two of us flying Stukas were the only two who were going to bomb the bridges, everyone else was going to fly into them. Since we were the slowest we had to start at 7:05pm on April 16, the day the Russians started their final push. We were carrying 1,800 pound bombs. The fighters had, I think, 1,200 pound bombs.

MH: Did you have any fighter escort on this mission?

Neumann: Yes, for the two of us we had eight Me-109s. however, when Lieutenant Lenz went to his Stuka and right after he pushed his master switch he happened to look down and saw that his bomb was armed. If he had started his motor, the bomb would have blown up. He tip-toed out of his plane and they pushed my plane, which was parked next to his, far away. So, I started by myself with all either of the fighters....After all of that I started later than what was planned, maybe 7:50. So, I flew to my target, which was the bridge at Aurith, just south of Frankfurt on the Oder. When I got there, it was almost sundown. I did not have that long a flight. I think it took me about 20 minutes. Before I got there I waved away my escort. When I got to the bridge, I went up to 6,000 meters, went into a dive and dropped my bomb. They did not know what hit them. That was the only time I blacked out from the G forces. When I came to, I saw the bridge breaking up. If you look at a map of Germany today you will notice that the bridge has not been rebuilt, even though the road still goes to the river. After I pulled up, I went back down and attacked the Russian trucks with my cannons. Initially, there was no ground fire, they were that surprised. On the third approach they woke up, and I got hit in the cooling tank. I pulled the handle that isolated the coolant in the engine from the tank. That gave me about another 10 or 15 minutes worth of flying time. From there I made it to the autobahn that went to Berlin and flew about halfway back to Berlin. It was dark by that time, so I could not tell you exactly where I landed. I saw the stripes on the autobahn and thought that it would make a perfect landing strip. I went down and the moment I flared out I found out that the infantry had put some telephone poles in the center. I tried to avoid them and went down the 15-foot embankment. Only a little bit of my motor was out of the ground when I finally stopped. I got out of the plane and went up to the autobahn. A little car came by and I stopped him. He was the manager of an old people's home. He took me to the home and I spent two days with them. They had everything - food, water, cigarettes - but did not have gasoline for their car. So, we went back to my plane and sucked the fuel out of my tanks into these big, glass bottles. The manager took me to Berlin so that I could find my unit.

MH: Did you go back to the airfield where you had started your last mission?

Neumann: No, I called them up, and they told me that the mission was over and to go back to my unit.

MH: I wonder how many of the 50 airmen made it back?

Neumann: I never found out. I went north to try to find my comrades, but on my way I saw them fly overhead going to some new base. I went to the airfield t Prenzlau, but it had been abandoned already. I found an Fw-190 in one of the hangers and flew it to Neu Brandenberg.

MH: They had abandoned the airfield but left and operational plane?

Neumann: It was a surprise to me also. I check it out. It had plenty of gas and everything looked good. However, I did not check it real closely since the Russians were beginning to shell the airfield. All it was missing was a battery. I found one and pit it in and everything worked fine. I started the engine and took off. I pulled the wheels in, but they did not work right. So, I tried again and they finally went into lace. When I got to Neu Brandenberg I tried to put the wheels down, but they wouldn't go out. Then one went out and one stayed in. I realized then why the plane had been left. It had been through a belly landing and had not been completely fixed. So I smashed the plane on the airfield runway. It was still a good landing though. I had a couple of dozen eggs in my suitcase that I was carrying in the compartment and none of them were broken during the landing. No one was there, so I left and went into New Brandenberg to find a woman who had taught me to fly the Me-262.

MH: When did you learn to fly the Me-262?

Neumann: It was in March 1945 when she taught me. I only flew the Me-262 for about 40 minutes. I did three touch-and-goes. It was an easy plane to fly and I had a very smooth ride. But when I landed I found the unit packing up and getting ready to leave and go back to our Stukas.

MH: What happened after you after that?

Neumann: I was in Heidelberg, but they were arresting young men and shipping them to the Russian sector. I knew that I had to do something so that I would not be sent to the Russian sector. The U.S. Army was advertising for sign painters. So, I became a sign painter. This gave me the best identification I could get, which was an American working card. I worked in the headquarters of the Seventh Army and later the Third Army when they changed over. It was there that I met General George S. Patton. They wanted a sign painted for his desk, and I was given the job of doing it. When it was finished, the American sergeant to me that since I painted it, I could take it to him. Most of the people there were afraid of him. So, I took the sign to him and showed him the sign. My face was still badly burned, and I was still using a cane. He asked me, "Where did you receive your wounds?" I told him and he told me to take a chair. We talked for about two hours. My English was decent enough by then that I did not need a translator. He got a bottle of booze out and gave me some. The funny thing was that it was a German booze called Asbach Uralt. He told me that if it was up to him that he would give us our weapons back and finish the job. "Russia is the target, not you guys", he told me. About two weeks later, he was dead. The first rumor we hard was that a low-hanging wire had cut his head off. There were a lot of rumors about his death.

MH: How did you get to the United States?

Neumann: My sister had moved here before the war, and she sponsored my wife and me.

MH: What sticks out the most in your mind from the war?

Neumann: Probably the second time I was shot down. It was the worst experience. I was very lucky that time.