German B-24 infiltrating US B-24 formations?

I have always viewed reports of B-17 stalking or inserting into a formation (or B-24) as dubious at best. Hans Lerner doesn't discuss Rosarius Zirkus 'loaning' any captured US aircraft to any LW operational unit, and specifically no mention of KG 200.

Further the notion of trying taking off, climbing to altitude and pursuing a US bomber formation with perhaps a 15 mpg speed advantage, find it, causally 'slide' in and try to remain anonymous is also amusing. First, nobody from a trailing formation is going to believeably catch up to a leading formation.

Second, the Division leaders and all squadron navigators know their position in the Task Force, and know which BG's are ahead of them.. so tail ID would have to match to one BG up front.

Third, premature ejaculation by LW would put the disguised bomber at great risk.

Fourth, a stalking Ju 88 or 188 at altitude and 10 miles away can see the US bomber stream to report altitude and airspeed and strength with much less risk - and much greater chances of actually getting 'close enough'.

I just discount the 'alien' bomber/stalker theory for those reasons.

If I was deciding to waste a valuable asset, I would try to sneak in a Aphrodite type B-17 into England and attack say, Parliament..

gjs238 said:

Knowing that this sort of thing may happen with captured aircraft, why don't crews bail and crash their aircraft instead of landing and permitting the enemy to capture the plane?

Click to expand...

Maybe injured crew who cant jump

gjs238 said:

Knowing that this sort of thing may happen with captured aircraft, why don't crews bail and crash their aircraft instead of landing and permitting the enemy to capture the plane?

Click to expand...

As "Flyboyj" said, if it will fly then a pilot will try and land it. My father was a FAA pilot and that was certainly his attitude. Abandoning an aircraft by parachute was certainly a last resort in his mind.

Cheers

Steve

mis-ID was done on both sides during the war even by day worse of course at night. Frankly I will believe a wekusta/recon Ju 88A a mile out giving height and directional course to be fed to ground control and then back again to defensive LW gruppen makes perfect sense...

KG 200 did fly suicide missions, it also used Allied A/C in it's arsenal but most and it is not known officially but secret missions were flown in the east. have a friend that flew 109's with the unit of which he has talked almost nil about. what we know that has been written and in truth the stealth unit-part of it was drawn to agent dropping behind Allied lines at night but again dark colored captured equipment but with local LW markings applied.

Erich said:

mis-ID was done on both sides during the war even by day worse of course at night. Frankly I will believe a wekusta/recon Ju 88A a mile out giving height and directional course to be fed to ground control and then back again to defensive LW gruppen makes perfect sense...

KG 200 did fly suicide missions, it also used Allied A/C in it's arsenal but most and it is not known officially but secret missions were flown in the east. have a friend that flew 109's with the unit of which he has talked almost nil about. what we know that has been written and in truth the stealth unit-part of it was drawn to agent dropping behind Allied lines at night but again dark colored captured equipment but with local LW markings applied.

Click to expand...

While mis ID'ing aircraft was probably what happened more times than not I wish there were Luftwaffe reports of how they used captured planes. Would be very interesting

Balljoint said:

Then there's the story of the phantom P-38 flown by Lt. Guido Rossi of the Axis forces that was discussed on an earlier thread. Good tale not entirely disproved but drags in the YB-40 and Guido's wife such that it rings of a scriptwriter rather than reality.

Click to expand...

A Martin Cadin fairy tale. No YB-40 were ever sent to Italy

~ Harrison there is a book on the subject you are interested in, sadly I do not have a title for you. it may have been written in German but then again maybe not. Yb-40's were never used in combat there was however tests of using a tail turret 20mm weapon however and these failed due to active vibration. due to the closeness of the US bomber formations in late 43 for defensive purposes LW pilots thought because of the amount of .50 cal they were receiving that the B-17's especially were mounting 20mm.s

It's hard to believe though no one admitted to it because what would someone have to gain by keeping it secret after the war was over?

Unless of course they escaped and were laying low

Erich said:

Yb-40's were never used in combat

Click to expand...

Actually they were with poor results..

Boeing YB-40 Flying Fortress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

stona said:

Nobody in their right mind would .......

Click to expand...

nobody in their right mind would have done the majority of the things pilots on either side did. these were boys in their early 20s and late teens. hell, i being a little more of a right mind wouldnt attempt half the crap now that i did when i was that age....

bobbysocks said:

nobody in their right mind would have done the majority of the things pilots on either side did. these were boys in their early 20s and late teens. hell, i being a little more of a right mind wouldnt attempt half the crap now that i did when i was that age....

Click to expand...

Absolutely. It is one of the great tragedies of history that wars get started by old men and fought by young men. Teenagers are easy to recruit because...

1. They think it will be fun
2. They know for a fact they were born bullet-proof.

...neither of which misconception survives beyond the first few seconds of combat. Then us old farts wonder why the ones who come home get so uppity and disrespectful of their elders.
War is a game for a-holes and innocents; a-holes to start them and innocents to fight them. Oh, and the odd pseudo philosopher pontificating without ever having fought in one, of course!

Amen to that last sentence.

The hazards of flying an "enemy" aircraft even when clearly marked with German national markings, codes and special markings.
This is a B-24 liberator (KO+XA) which was forced to make a forced landing having been hit by flak. One of the 29 passengers on board was killed by fragments. The aircraft was clearly marked and the underside of the rear fuselage, wing tips and lower surfaces of the ailerons were all painted yellow. It didn't save it and poor old Oberfeldwebel Rauchfuss, who was at the controls, was lucky to make a relatively soft landing.



After field repairs he attempted to take of again but the nose gear collapsed and the aircraft was set on fire, soon burning out.



You'll notice that the letters of the stammkennzeichen are not visible on the fuselage but were carried on the undersides of the wings in an effort to prevent exactly this sort of thing happening.

CL+XC was a natural metal aircraft and carried its code letters on a large white panel painted on the fuselage in an effort to make them more visible. The letters were always black.

All the B-24s used by KG 200 were marked similarly. One, the B-24 previously known to it's American crew as "Sunshine", was used by KG 200 on night operations and carried very large, oversized, balkenkreuz in this role, presumably to aid identification in poor light.

I have pictures of several B-24s in Luftwaffe markings, A3+KB, NF+FL, CL+XC, KO+XA, A3+PB, maybe more if I looked harder.
Does anyone have a picture of a flying B-24 in the hands of the Luftwaffe in US markings?

There is not one shred of credible evidence that the Luftwaffe flew inappropriately marked B-24s (or any other type) to infiltrate enemy formations.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

There is not one shred of credible evidence that the Luftwaffe flew inappropriately marked B-24s (or any other type) to infiltrate enemy formations.

Cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

But there's a TON of evidence of inappropriately marked allied aircraft joining up on allied bomber streams using non-procedure R/T. I've become a bit skeptical about "bomber infiltrators" being a wide spread thing, while there seems to be little/ no evidence to show that the LW did this, there is little/ no evidence to show that they didn't. Again, I'd like to know more about the POW who claimed that this was done and those who disputed those claims.

FLYBOYJ said:

But there's a TON of evidence of inappropriately marked allied aircraft joining up on allied bomber streams using non-procedure R/T. I've become a bit skeptical about "bomber infiltrators" being a wide spread thing, while there seems to be little/ no evidence to show that the LW did this, there is little/ no evidence to show that they didn't. Again, I'd like to know more about the POW who claimed that this was done and those who disputed those claims.

Click to expand...

Agreed, while I do not believe it was something part of protocol, there's way too many accounts (granted most are mis-ID aircraft) that I find it hard to believe it NEVER happened.

What aircraft did it?

We can account for just about every allied aircraft that the Germans returned to flying condition and they were all given a stammkennzeichen which was prominently displayed along with national markings and other special markings. I hesitate to say every aircraft because we're talking Luftwaffe seventy years ago, but I'm as sure as anyone can be that all the B-17s and B-24s returned to flight can be accounted for. They were not that numerous. Why would they be?

I keep seeing what amounts to hearsay, easily explained by simple if well meaning misidentifications from extremely anxious and stressed young men on combat operations. What I don't see is any hard evidence in the face of a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

What aircraft did it?

We can account for just about every allied aircraft that the Germans returned to flying condition and they were all given a stammkennzeichen which was prominently displayed along with national markings and other special markings. I hesitate to say every aircraft because we're talking Luftwaffe seventy years ago, but I'm as sure as anyone can be that all the B-17s and B-24s returned to flight can be accounted for. They were not that numerous. Why would they be?

I keep seeing what amounts to hearsay, easily explained by simple if well meaning misidentifications from extremely anxious and stressed young men on combat operations. What I don't see is any hard evidence in the face of a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

B-17F-100-BO "Miss Nonalee II"
Last B-17 captured by Germans in 1943 was B-17F-100-BO "Miss Nonalee II" (42-30336) from 548BS 385BG. This plane piloted by Lieutenant Glyndon G. Bell was damaged 9th of October 1943 during bombing run on Arado plant in Anklam (Eastern Prussia). Crew decided to go to Sweden but they made mistake and flew to Denmark. All crew members excluding pilot jumped and were caught by Danish police collaborating with Germans. Lieutenant Bell made forced landing near Varde, Denmark and after failed try to set fire on bomber evaded Danish policeman and was transported by Danish Resistance to Sweden. Meanwhile Germans sent from Flensburg transport plane Ar 232 with technicians. After few hours work lightened plane took off to Rechlin. There in unknown what happened with plane after repairs and traditional period of trials in Rechlin.


All B-17 (excluding "Miss Nonalee II") were transfered to KG 200 - special Luftwaffe unit

from: Luftwaffe Resource Group - B-17 Flying Fortress

So there is one instance of a captured aircraft simply 'vanishing' from the records...

From VIII Fighter command document:

' The first instance of a German-flown P-47 was when it accompanied an Me-109 on June 25th, 1944 and made six or seven approaches to one of our bomber formations, but without attacking! The captured B-17s were used to shadow our formations and to act as decoys, possibly as practice targets for fighters to learn the proper approach against the real thing. November 30th, 1943, marked the date when the first P-38s were used by the enemy , for it came out of one of our bomber formations on a mission for which no Allied Lightnings were booked for escort. It had no Allied markings, and when the P-47 pilot pulled alongside, the Nazi '' Dove for the Deck''. Another enemy piloted P-38 was shot down on the same mission by an American pilot. '

So

1) No Lightnings for escort, why did one suddenly appear?
2)No allied Markings, so yes it did not have Stars and Stripes but it was in the air

Leaves a question

Does anyone know where the raid was on November 30th?
----------------------------------------
Then;

''At 12 noon on August 11, 1943, a B-17F of the 419th BS, 301st BG was shot down off the coast of Italy. What was unique about the aircraft that shot it down?

The aircraft was a captured P-38 flown by Regia Aeronautica test pilot Col. Angelo Tondi. The P-38 was captured 12 June when it landed by mistake at Sardinia on a ferry flight. The B-17 was 42-30307, named "Bonnie Sue", 6 were KIA, 3 evaded. MACR 490.

The aircraft was a P-38G which, while on a flight from Gibraltar to Malta on June 12, 1943, suffered compass problems and landed by mistake at Capoterra, Sardinia. The Lightning was painted in Italian markings, and transferred to the Italian Test Center at Guidonia. On August 11, 1943, chief test pilot Col. Angelo Tondi used the P-38 to intercept USAAF bombers on their way to attack targets in central Italy. Tondi shot down a B-17F, Bonnie Sue, of the 419th BS, 301st BG''

So while painted in Italian Markings, it shot down a B-17.

Then here's a case of what appears to be blatant mis ID

"12/15 Me-109s seen S/O Enschede, 30,000 feet, 1110, with British Markings, repeat, British Markings."

Maybe Mustang MKIIIs?

B-17engineer said:

Then here's a case of what appears to be blatant mis ID

"12/15 Me-109s seen S/O Enschede, 30,000 feet, 1110, with British Markings, repeat, British Markings."

Maybe Mustang MKIIIs?

Click to expand...

There were many, many instances of this sort of thing. I've seen it in combat/encounter reports so the men filing must have believed it. I've even seen reports of German aircraft carrying "invasion stripes".

It is simply a mistake or misidentification.

As for the disappearing B-17, there were hangars full of captured enemy aircraft at various places, including Rechlin. I posted a picture somewhere showing such a storage facility to show someone the fate of a Fairey Battle in which he was interested. Most ended up in the smelter and this B-17 probably did too. There wouldn't have been much of a paper trail and what there was has almost certainly been lost.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

There were many, many instances of this sort of thing. I've seen it in combat/encounter reports so the men filing must have believed it. I've even seen reports of German aircraft carrying "invasion stripes".

It is simply a mistake or misidentification.

As for the disappearing B-17, there were hangars full of captured enemy aircraft at various places, including Rechlin. I posted a picture somewhere showing such a storage facility to show someone the fate of a Fairey Battle in which he was interested. Most ended up in the smelter and this B-17 probably did too. There wouldn't have been much of a paper trail and what there was has almost certainly been lost.

Cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

Yeah but again its speculation they were sent to be scrapped. Its speculation they were used as aircraft to shadow formations. I think its pretty practical to use an enemy aircraft to work as a spotter plane. Why use a German reconnaissance plane and have the possibility of being targeted by allied fighters? If you are in an allied craft you put doubt in their mind that you could be a potential friendly although you don't belong there.

Why scrap them?