ERNST SCHEUFELE
Scheufele, based in Norway, originally at first flew cover for the Navy, but later joined II/JG 5 and served in the East. Ernst then flew for IV/JG4 flying home defense duties under Kommodore Michalski. On 3 December 1944 Ernst was shot down by ground fire from an American supply unit near Aachen. Flying both Bf109's and Fw190's, Ernst achieved 18 victories including 3 bombers and 2 P-51 Mustangs.
The following is extracted from an 8 page letter received from former IV./JG 4 pilot Ernst Scheufele. He describes his final sortie at the controls of a Bf 109 as Staffelkapitän 14./JG 4. An extract from the same letter appears in Eric Mombeek's JG 4 history. A fuller account appears here in English for the first time.
....In the early hours of the morning of 3 December 1944, the pilots of IV Gruppe of J.G. 4, were taken by bus from our quarters in Sprendlingen the ten kilometers or so to the airfield at Rhein-Main. This trip had become a daily routine. Our readiness room was located in the as-yet-undamaged terminal building of the former civilian airport. The terminal building was just as it was when I visited it as a child. (The village where my parents had lived was just three kilometers from the airport as the crow flies) Our Bf 109s were hidden in the woods that ran alongside the main road to Kelsterbach, which was the same road where the water pumping station that supplied the city of Frankfurt was located. We would taxi along this road to reach the runway. The mood of the pilots that day was much like the weather; cold and morose. If there was one consolation there had at least been no frost or snow. It was around midday that we received the call from Kommodore Michalski. He ordered us into the air immediately to fly a low level strafing attack against American supply columns in the sector Stollberg/Aachen, or more precisely in the "forest of death", Hürtgen. Well, I'd been a Bf 109 pilot for some two and a half years and been assigned many different types of sortie during that time..shipping and dive bomber escort, Mosquito hunting, free hunting in Russia, sorties against massed bomber Pulks. I'd even practised dropping bombs on the wreck of a British cruiser off Bodo. However I'd never before received such a senseless order as the mission that Michalski now assigned us. Even I, as a mere twenty-one-year old found it incredible that such orders were being issued by our General Staff...here we were flying the latest, light-weight, unarmored version of the Bf 109 designed for top cover escort duties, being tasked with flying a ground-attack sortie that none of us had been trained for, especially the more inexperienced of our number. Not only that but our fighters were totally unsuited. It would be a completely uneconomic deployment in terms of the results we were likely to achieve compared to the risks we would be running. But orders are orders ! By the time we were taxiing out it was early afternoon. To make matters worse, my own machine was unserviceable, although I had no idea what the problem was, so I had been assigned a 109 that I had not flown before and would therefore really have to keep my wits about me. Fortunately I was not entrusted with my usual responsibilities. Since the month of June in fact, I had often led the Gruppe into combat but with Gruppenkommandeur Wienhusen at the helm we once again had an experienced officer leading from the front. I was therefore able to give my full attention to the idiosyncracies of my 'strange' kite and concentrate on my own 14 Staffel pilots and the weather conditions. For once I wouldn't be responsible for radio comms or orienting the formation in the right direction. I can still clearly recall over-flying the Rhine near Bonn at 200-300 m on a north-westerly heading. The Rhine would prove to an ideal landmark for navigating home should the formation be dispersed if enemy fighters were encounterd - should that happen it would then simply be a question of heading back east and putting down at one of the many landing strips in the area. Up to this point in the sortie I was still feeling quite optimistic. The low cloud deck would offer plenty of cover should we encounter the enemy. All in all this was much better than charging into a Pulk of bombers under a blazing sun with a pack of P-51 Mustangs snapping at your heels......"
Ernst Scheufele, was so friendly to send me a signed picture of him when I wrote him a letter a week of two ago.
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