quote from 'Heinkel 177, 277 274' by Manfred Griehel and Joachim Dressel, ISBN 1 85310 364 0, containing a German wartime report on He-177
In May 1944 Major Schubert of the Luftwaffengeneralstab and Reichsmarschall Goring's Adjutancy was finally appointed to establish the principal reasons for the delays experienced in re- equipping Luftwaffe bomber units with the He 177. Nothing needs to be added to his report:
Most of the aircrew of units selected for re- equipment with the He 177 were operationally 'tired-out' and relatively few were from front-line units. The necessary personnel consisted primarily of Young, often inexperienced aircrews, and for reasons of capacity their conversion training at operational training and replacement Gruppen could only be completed in relatively few cases. Most of the young pilots had only nine to 12 months of practical flying experience prior to being transferred to such a complicated aircraft as the He 177.
Apart from that, the new operational crews had been trained on the Ju 88, and most had hardly any training in the art of night-flying. The necessary conversion training meant the compulsory withdrawal of operational He 177s for use as trainers, which in turn led to an overload of work for the technical personnel due to the numerous instances of damage suffered by these aircraft as a result of the training activities.
Matters were made all the more difficult by the fact that some of the ground personnel had not been pre-instructed on the He 177. In addition, the vast majority of the technical personnel arrived at their He 177-equipped bomber Gruppen several months after the units had first received their re- equipment orders. By spring 1944, some units were still short of about 50 per cent of engine fitters. Some of the other personnel first set eyes on the He 177 upon arrival at their assigned unit's airfield, their instruction and training on the Heinkel bomber having to start there and then.
The supply of aircraft servicing tools and appliances also did not keep up with deliveries of He 177s. Thus, for instance, the wing attachment cranes needed to facilitate powerplant changes arrived several months after the delivery of the aircraft themselves, and even then they were too few in number. For IV/KG 1 there was no specialised engine-changing equipment at all, and for this reason the unit had to suspend all training activities in mid-April 1944.
The 'engine circulation' (service units - repair depots - service units) also did not flow as it should have done at first, because of a lack of transportation. Neither the supply of new engines nor the return of DB 606/610s in need of repair functioned properly, least of all the supply of exchange powerplants to individual airfields. It wasn't until April 1944 that these shortcomings were effectively overcome, but they were never fully eradicated.
According to Major Schubert, the time expenditure required for the maintenance and servicing of the He 177 was incomparable with that of any other operational aircraft in service with the Luftwaffe. The jacking-up operation to change the main undercarriage tyres alone (which had to done at least twice as frequently as on other aircraft types) lasted some 2fi hours using the prescribed mechanical spindle blocks. Yet by early summer 1944 far too few of these 12-ton spindle blocks recommended by the manufacturer were available to He 177-equipped units.
The layout of the powerplants too did not exactly help attempts to carry out the necessary servicing work. Because of the inaccessibility of the coupled engines their dismounting took considerably longer than similar work on, for example, the Ju 88 or He 111. Due to the low training level of the technicians, a 25-hour control check on the He 177 usually took two, sometimes even three days.
Criticism was also made of the airfields selected to receive the He 177. Apart from Aalborg in Denmark, all of the others were already completely overcrowded, and lacked the potential for dispersal, camouflage and suitable protection of their aircraft against bomb splinters and shrapnel. For this reason low-level attacks by Allied aircraft caused great losses amongst the He 177s parked out in the open from 1944 onwards, especially as the airfields were now constantly within the range of both fighters and bombers. To make matters worse, this vulnerability to attack had a knock-on effect on He 177 training activities, which sometimes had to be reduced by up to per cent because enemy aircraft were on their way and air raid warnings came into force.
No consideration had been given to the fact that the technically complex He 177 required sufficient hangar space for maintenance and repair purposes, especially during the winter months. The delays caused by this shortcoming alone may well have been responsible for the postponement of He 177 operations by some six months to a year.
