Luftwaffenkommando Tichwin

I

n mid-October 1941, overextended supply lines and inadequate replacements deprived the Wehrmacht of much of the striking capacity it had enjoyed in the previous four months. On top of this came the difficul­ties created by the almost impassably muddy roads. At this point the major offensive along the entire Eastern Front had withered to a number of restricted advances of limited scope.

With respect to Army Group North, the objective had shrunk to merely strangling Leningrad. For this pur­pose, during the latter half of October an offensive was launched across the Volkhov River, which connects Lake Ladoga with Lake Ilmen. The goal of this operation was the city of Tikhvin, on the main supply road to the Soviet forces holding the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. If achieved, a decisive strike would also be dealt against the DBA transport aircraft force charged with supplying Leningrad from the air. Despite the destruction of many of these transport planes, the fighters of JG 54 had failed to put an end to this small but crucial aerial supply line.

KG 77, Ill./JG 54, and a reconnaissance Staffel were assigned to support the impending German ground offensive. Assembled into Luftwaffenkommando Tichwin and commanded by Oberst Hans-Joachim Raithel, these units managed to pave the way for the German XXXIX Panzer Corps through stiff resistance in dense fir forests.

On the Soviet side, slightly more than a hundred aircraft of VVS-Leningrad Front (of which seventy-three were operational on October 17) were assembled at air­fields near Tikhvin and Volkhov in order to counter the German offensive. Later these units were reinforced by 2 RAG from the Stavka reserve. Even though the Bf

109s of 1II./JG 54 maintained air superiority, this Soviet aerial force managed to disrupt the advance on the ground with “small, but often very troublesome attacks upon the divisions, the bridge sites, headquarters, and rear supply services. They were usually carried out in low-level flight by three to five twin-engine aircraft.”1 Also, while con­ducting low-level close-support missions of their own, the Ju 88s of Luftwaffenkommando Tichwin were sub­jected to fierce ground fire, w’hich resulted in severe losses.

Hauptmann Dietrich Peltz, commander of I1./KG 77 and one of the most successful German bomber pilots, responded sharply to the increasingly difficult situ­ation: “Almost the entire generation of prewar-trained officers was lost in combat. The loss rate in the bomber units increased with each month. Unrest started spread­ing, first of all among the most experienced young offic­ers. Hauptmann Peltz spoke out with the commanding general. He mentioned the urgent need for some particu­lar changes, including personnel changes, but mainly the need for a change in tactics. Peltz’s frankness led to his dismissal from first-line service at the end of October.”2

German troubles aside, it was the battered aviation units in the Soviet Northwestern Zone that took the worst punishment. On October 29 the Soviets lost another of their precious fighter aces in the air over Leningrad. On that day a group of Soviet fighters led by Kapitan Leonid Grekov’s 169 1AP was scrambled to intercept an incom­ing German air raid. The opposing forces clashed right
over the burning city. Kapitan Grekov was able to claim two victories, while Starshiy Leytenant Krasnogub and Leytenant Kovalyov claimed other Ger­man aircraft. Luftflotte 1 recorded the loss of five aircraft—four Ju 88s of KG 1 and KG 77 and one Bf 109 of l./JG 54. Just as the combat was drawing to a close, a Schwarm of Bf 109s attacked Grekov from behind. His fighter in flames, Grekov bailed out but was killed by a machine-gun burst from one of the Bf 109s as he hung in his harness. Kapitan Leonid Grekov, who was credited with four individual and ten group victories, was named a Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.

The next day, October 30, it was the turn of one of the most famous Griinherz pilots to be shot down. During a free-hunting mission over the Volkhov River, the Staffclkapitan of 9./JG 54, Oberleutnant Hans-Ekkehard Bob, encountered an 1-16. Closing in from behind and certain that he w’ould score his thirty-eighth victory in seconds, Oberleutnant Bob saw the 1-16 make a swift 180-degree turn. In the next moment, Bob’s Bf 109 caught the full burst from the I – 16’s guns. Hit in the radiator, the Bf 109 was doomed. Oberleutnant Bob made a belly landing behind enemy lines—for the second time during the Eastern Front cam­paign. He was fortunate to evade capture in the dense forests and marshlands, and he eventually managed to reach the German lines.

One week later, Oberleutnant Bob was back in the air again. This was on November 6, as the Soviets at­tempted to prevent a major Luftwaffe raid against Leningrad. During the week preceding the celebration of the Russian Revolution, on November 7, Generaloberst Alfred Keller had instructed the bombers of Luftflotte 1 to drop leaflets over Leningrad, “the cradle of the Revo­lution,” with promises to celebrate the anniversary with large-scale bombing raids. The command of VVS – Leningrad Front decided to forestall these raids with heavy strikes against the German bomber bases. When aerial reconnaissance reported a concentration of forty Ju 88s, thirty-one Bf 109s, and four transport planes at Siverskaya Airdrome, an order was issued to 174 ShAP and 125 BBAP, equipped with II-2s and Pe-2s

respectively, to launch an attack in three waves against the base.

Major Hannes Trautloft recalled that the raid came totally unexpected. Led by Kapitan Sergey Polyakov, a veteran from the Spanish Civil War and the Winter War, the Shturmoviks of 174 ShAP claimed the destruction of eleven enemy planes on the ground. KG 77 and KGr 806 registered seven Ju 88s lost, and a large part of the fuel depot was burned down. The scrambling Bf 109s claimed two Soviet airplanes shot down. With the first, the total score of JG 54 reached fifteen hundred. The other was filed as Oberleutnant Bob’s thirty-eighth personal victory.

Mladshiy Leytenant Anatoliy Panfilov’s 174 ShAP 11-2 was missing in this attack. In fact, Panfilov bailed out over enemy-held territory and was killed in an exchange of fire with Ger­man soldiers.

The Soviet air-base raid could not prevent Generaloberst Keller from carry­ing out his threat, although the forces at his disposal were too weak to completely fulfill the promise of a large-scale raid.

Vera Inber, who survived the siege of Leningrad, wrote in her diary on Novem­ber 7: “Outside the night was pitch-dark and we could hear the sound of sirens, the antiaircraft fire and aircraft engines in the darkness….”

Following a bitter struggle, Tikhvin fell into German hands on November 10. In conjunction with the fall of Tikhvin, the small air transport fleet aiding Leningrad was also lost.

With the completion of this event, exhaustion on both sides froze the Leningrad front in place. In the besieged city, the worst starvation set in.

Another blow to the weakened Soviet air units of VVS-Leningrad Front was dealt on the last day of November, when three Bf 109s of JG 54 shot down and killed Starshiy Leytenant Luka Muravitskiy of 127 LAP. At the time of
his death, Muravitskiy was among the most successful Soviet fighter aces. On October 22, he had been recog­nized as a Hero of the Soviet Union for achieving four­teen personal and collective victories.

The air war on the northern sector of the Eastern Front between June and November 1941 was character­ized by both a vast qualitative superiority and limited resources on the German side. In aerial combat the Bf 109s were peerless. Between June 22 and November 8,

1941, JG 54 Granherz claimed more than eleven hun­dred kills against approximately seventy Bf 109s shot down (including forced landings) and twenty-seven pilots lost.5

The chronic lack of close-support air units in Fliegerkorps 1 had compelled the commander of Luftflotte 1, Generaloberst Alfred Keller, to divert large portions of his twin-engine bombers to costly low-level attacks in the immediate vicinity of the front. As has been demon­strated, this makeshift tactic resulted in heavy losses and caused discord among the bomber crews.

KG 77 had taken a particularly heavy beating, regis­tering seventy Ju 88s shot down between June 22 and October 31.4 Despite having suffered almost equal losses, morale remained high in JG 54, mainly due to the large victory toll it achieved. The two other Geschwader in Fliegerkorps 1, KG 1 and KG 76, registered thirty-nine and fifty-three Ju 88s shot down or lost due to other causes, respectively, between June 22 and October ЗІ.’ Thus Fliegerkorps I registered a total of roughly 250 aircraft shot down or lost due to other causes during combat missions through October 31, 1941. To these losses should be added those of Fliegerkorps VIII, in the northern combat zone, and of Fliegerfiihrer Ostsee. Nevertheless, the total number of Luftwaffe combat losses in the northern combat zone from the period June to October 1941 did not exceed 400.

The temporary’ shift of the close-support command,

Fliegerkorps VIII, to this area had improved the situa­tion. The Stukas and Zerstorer of this command played a decisive role in breaching the Soviet fortifications along the Luga River, which enabled Army Group North to reach the outskirts of Leningrad.

Nevertheless, due to the combat attrition in combi­nation with overextended lines of supply, the operational strength of both Fliegerkorps I and Fiegerkorps VIII diminished rapidly, with the result that the striking power of the air forces became diffused among multiple tasks along the front line. Tremendous blows were dealt the Soviets, such as the attacks against Kronstadt, wherever Luftwaffe planes were present in force, but in other areas, reinforced Red Army forces increased pressure on the exhausted German ground troops. Following the with – drawal of Fliegerkorps VIII, Luftflotte 1 in practice shifted to the defensive. The Tikhvin operation in October and November 1941 was the last offensive effort by Army Group North during Operation Barbarossa.

On the Soviet side, the air forces in the Northwest­ern Zone were led by perhaps the most able VVS com­mander during the entire war, General-Mayor Aleksandr Novikov. Under his command, Red aviation displayed great skill in adapting to new situations. There is no doubt that the incessant Soviet pressure from the air markedly delayed the German offensive toward Leningrad, even if it was at a terrible cost to participating Soviet airmen.