In a book I am reading a FW 190 pilot, Hauptman Erhard Jähnert Staffelkäpitan of 2./Schlachtgeschwader 3, recounts his 599th mission flying a FW 190F-8 over of the Kurland Bridgehead:
On 16 February 1945, I attacked enemy armor in my Focke Wolf 190. It had already gotten quite close to our main line of resistance in foggy weather about 10 kilometers southeast of Tukkum.
Three of my comrades closed up with me when I designated the target. We dove on the group of armor and fired our rockets. I was fortunate enough to knock out three enemy tanks in three passes. Three more were crippled by my comrades. Since I expended my rockets, I tried to destroy the remaining tanks, which had already turned back, with my on-board weapons. In the process my aircraft took one or two hits in the lubrication system and also in the compass connections.
Orientation was no longer possible. Vision forward was prevented by the oil film that built up on the front windshield. The cockpit canopy was also stuck, so I sat in my aircraft as if I were in a coffin.
When the engine oil ran out and the engine temperature rose, I had to make an emergency landing. I could only see to the rear, so, with a “look back” I landed on an open field near an abandoned artillery position about 30 meters from a farmstead and 80 meters from a high-tension electric line.
I am certain that my landing rates as a most extraordinary piece of good luck in aviation.
I had neither pistol nor identification with me. When I saw several soldiers in camouflage parkas draw near I grabbed the flare pistol from the cockpit and waited.
Again my luck held. They were Latvians from one of the two Latvian Waffen-SS divisions. They took me to their battalion command post.
I was well received in the grenadiers’ bunker and fed. Soon I was driven back to my airfield.
Incidentally, Erhard Jähnert received the knights cross on 18 May 1943 as a Leutnant flying stukas while attached to Stukageschwader 4.
Later as Staffelkäpitan of 9./Stukageschwader 2, he took part in that squadrons greatest success when it sank 3 soviet destroyers in the Black Sea south of the Crimea.
He was later removed from combat duty and assigned as an instructor. In the fall of 1944 at his own personal request he was transferred to the Kurland Bridgehead and made Staffelkäpitan of 2./Schlachtgeschwader 3.
He destroyed 25 Soviet tanks while flying the FW 190F-8 over Kurland.. On the day of surrender he took what passengers he could and flew out of Kurland and landed at Flensburg. He was put up for the oak leaves but in the hectic days just prior to German capitulation the award never went through.
I include alot of extraneous details because many folks have never read anything about luftwaffe ground attack pilots late in the war.
One other thing, the incident above took place over Kurland in winter and it could be the rapid cooling of the oil thickened it. The Germans had trouble with oil during severe cold weather and with help from captured soviets the made adjustments to their winter oil cultures. Like adding diesel to thin it out etc.
