Rybin, Y. Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck researched / Christer Bergstrom, Yuriy Rybin. - Sweden : [s. l.], 2019. - 190 p. : ill.
WALTER SCHUCK Walter Schuck (centre) at Jakob Norz’s funeral. Walter Schuck at Jakob Norz’s funeral. “Damned elevator . . . seems to be stuck!“ Schuck saw Norz’s smoking Messerschmitt enter a shallow dive towards the threatening rocks below, and he felt panic. “Jockel, you have to trim the aircraft!” Back came a desperate reply: “I already have applied full trim!” Everyone remained silent. Frustrated, they saw the aircraft continue downward. Now it was down at less than two hundred feet, and continued - as if it was pulled to earth by a gigantic magnet. “Will try to belly-land,” Norz said. Schuck held his breath. Below was a rough area, with large rocks pointing vertically towards the sky. The damaged Me 109 glided down. A few seconds before it touched ground, everyone knew that there was no hope. Then the plane flew straight into one of the large rocks. Although Schuck had understood what would happen, it gave him a shock to see it happen. Jockel Norz was instantly killed. But the war continued. That same afternoon, Schuck, Wollmann and ten other III./JG 5 pilots clashed with a single 11-2 and six Airacobras from 19 GIAP. Schuck was credited with the destruction of an Airacobra, and Ober leutnant Kurt Schulze - the Gruppenadjutant - knocked down the 11-2. In the next moment, Schulze was him self shot down by one of the Soviet escort fighters. The German pilot barely survived a crash landing. “I walked towards the west for several hours until German moun tain troops took me into their fortification, and I stayed there overnight. The next day JG 5 sent a Storch and flew me back to the airport,” recalls Kurt Schulze. In the evening of 16 September, a salvage group returned from Norz’s crash site with the body of the beloved airman - or rather, what remained of it. Jakob Norz’s body had been so utterly crushed by the violent impact against the rock that nothing but a few tiny parts of the body could be distinguished. Schuck found the funeral to be a disgrace. Rocks had been placed in the coffin to compensate for the low weight of the few body remains of Norz. Schuck also got upset by the funeral speech. Schuck knew that Norz had been a firm Catholic believer, and he felt that the funeral speech gave no justice to this side of his friend’s personality. All in all, Jockel Norz’s death dealt a terrible strike against Schuck. The safe and firm Jockel had been like a father to Schuck, and when he was gone, it felt as though the whole “magic” with the “Eismeerjager” was lost. The pilots in JG 5 would never see Schuck recover. During the next two weeks, he largely avoided company between the missions. Schuck rarely showed himself in the mess barrack, and when he did, he sat silently by himself in a corner. + T
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