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

WALTER SCHUCK О PROTECT OUR CONVOYS! When Schuck returned to Petsamo after his stay at Bad Schachen, he found that some things had changed. One man was missing, his Staffelkapitan Oberleutnat Wid­ owitz. He had crashed during a liaison flight with the unit’s Go 145 biplane. The wreck of the aircraft was found in the mountains, with Widowitz and his mechanic dead. Widowitz’s successor was Hauptmann Hans Her­ mann Schmidt. Major Gunther Scholz also had been appointed Geschwaderkommodore of JG 5. His place as Gruppenkommandeur in III./JG 5 was assumed by Hauptmann Heinrich Ehrler - formerly Staffelkapitan of 6./JG 5, the “Expertenstaffel”. Ehrler was awarded with the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross on 2 August 1943, for 112 victories. The most amazing thing was that Josef “Baby” Kai­ ser - Schuck’s Austrian friend in the 8th Staffel, who had been shot down over Soviet territory in December 1942 - was back, so to speak “from the dead” ! Kaiser’s story could fill an entire chapter. After Kaiser had been shot down, he was captured by the Soviets. To his great surprise, he was interrogated by a Jewish man who proved to be an old acquaintance from pre-war time in Vienna. The interrogator knew that Kaiser’s brother in those days had been the chairman of a Communist Youth Branch in Vienna, which Josef Kaiser was able to confirm. Kaiser was offered to choose between cooperating with the Soviets and working in the woods. He said that he chose the former, and was sent to a special school where he received training in radio transmission and encoding. In the summer of 1943, when his training was com­ pleted, he learned that he was going to be parachuted behind the German lines where his task would be to report via radio all German air activity. One evening, Kaiser was blindfolded and taken to an airfield. There he and a gigantic Feldwebel or Oberfeldwebel from the German Mountain troops hastily were ordered into a Pe-2 where they were assigned one parachute each. Due to the nervousness, the two men confused each other’s parachutes, so that Kaiser got the Mountain soldier’s parachute. The aircraft took off, and after about half an hour both men and their radio equipment were para­ chuted over the wilderness not far from the Arctic Ocean road south of Petsamo. However, because the giant Mountain soldier used a parachute assigned for a person of much less weight than his own, he hit the ground with too much force and sustained a painful injury. Kaiser established that the Mountain soldier, groan­ ing with pain, was completely unable to move. Kaiser gave him first aid and then walked to the Arctic Ocean road. There he waited until a German convoy of trucks arrived. He stopped the convoy and told the soldiers the whole story and asked them to help the injured Moun­ tain soldier. Kaiser and the Mountain soldier were cap­ tured and subject to interrogation. The fact that it took three or four weeks before JG 5 was even informed that