Rybin, Y. Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck researched / Christer Bergstrom, Yuriy Rybin. - Sweden : [s. l.], 2019. - 190 p. : ill.

WALTER SCHUCK ф THE LAST FIGHT Tuesday 10 April 1945. At the East Anglican airfields in England, more than thirteen hundred Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberator were made ready for US 8th Air Force’s Mission Num­ ber 938. Their main targets were the Me 262 bases - Rechlin-Larz and Parchim, 50 and 80 miles northwest of Berlin, where III./JG 7 was stationed; Oranienburg, home of Schuck’s 3./JG 7; Brandenburg-Briest where Stab/JG 7 and l./JG 7 were; and, near Magdeburg, seventy miles southwest of Berlin - Burg and Zerbst, where Oberleutnant Stehle’s 2./JG 7 and Me 262s of three other units, KG(J) 54, 10./NJG 11, and 2./NAGr 6 were stationed. Escort for the whole venture was provided by 843 P-51 Mustang fighters and 62 P-47 Thunderbolts. Through radio monitoring, the Germans were aware of the build-up of the air operation even before the bomb­ ers had taken off. At Nuthampstead aerodrome, about half-way between Cambridge and London, thirty-one Boeing B-17Gs of 398th BG took off between 1015 and 1040 hours. Led by Lieutenant-Colonel E. B. Daily, the For­ tresses assembled with 411 other B-17s of the 1st Air Division at Debden Buncher at an altitude of 8,000 feet. The assembly went good and was completed by 1125 hours, when the large melee turned towards the south­ east. 398th BG’s formations crossed the British coast just north of Felixstowe at 1204 hours. By that time, at Oranienburg, Walter Schuck was instructed to place his Me 262 pilots in cockpit alert. He had seven Me 262s at his disposal. It was a beautiful, sunny springday with a clear blue sky, although slightly hazy, and Schuck guessed that the Americans would probably take advantage of the weather to launch a major raid against Berlin. What Schuck of course did not know was that the whole 1st Air Division was heading towards his own air­ field at Oranienburg. Escort was provided by 289 P-51 Mustangs, which rendezvoused with the bombers at 1341 hours over Osnabruck in northwestern Germany. Since 4 April 1945, this area was in the hands of Brit­ ish and Canadian troops. The whole airspace over most of Germany also was almost completely controlled by the Allies. With the bulk of the Luftwaffe shifted to the Eastern Front to counter the Red Army’s massive offen­ sive, there was not much more than a handful of Me 262s left to defend Germany against the American aerial bombardments in daytime. From Osnabruck, 1st Air Division’s bomber stream turned slightly to the left. Heading 70 degrees the air­ craft climbed higher and higher as they pushed into Ger­ man-controlled territory. The two other bomber forces, the 2nd and 3rd Air divisions with altogether more than 800 heavy bombers, would carry out their attacks slightly ahead of the 1st AD. These flew against Rechlin and Parchim in the north, against Burg and Zerbst in T