In the first part of our material devoted to Ju-188, we examined the long way to create this rather interesting and little-known aircraft, which received the name "Racher" in the Luftwaffe - "Avenger" (since one of the goals of its creation was "revenge bombing" for bombing of German cities by the Allies). In continuation of the topic, we will consider the features of its combat use (although, of course, the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition would be better if a car of this class did not go beyond the drawing boards of German designers at all).
So, we can confidently talk about their fatal underestimation of this aircraft for the Nazi regime, because if the German leadership decided to accelerate the introduction of the Ju-188 into the series and its production would not begin in the spring of 1943, but in the spring of 1942, and if by the summer of 1943 the Luftwaffe could have had several thousand machines of this type, then at least the Axis Berlin-Rome could repel the landing of the allies in Sicily, and perhaps even change the course of the Battle of Kursk.
Ju-188 during a night attack by a naval convoy against the backdrop of an English destroyer.
The Ju-188 was not remembered by the Soviet soldiers as, for example, the "bast shoe" Ju-87 or "frame" (although numerically Ju-188 was produced even slightly more than the Fw-189). Firstly, this happened due to the fact that aircraft of this type were massively used only in the last year of World War II, when the Luftwaffe no longer had air supremacy and these aircraft could no longer constantly "hang" over the front line, carrying out reconnaissance or delivering bombs - assault strikes, as it was in 1941-1943. As you know, from the middle of 1943 until the end of the war, the only way of action of German strike and reconnaissance aircraft (due to the sharply increased quality level of the Soviet Air Force) was to reach the given area as quickly as possible, quickly drop bombs or take aerial photography, and return back to maximum speed. Secondly, the Ju-188 was primarily required in the Mediterranean and Western European theater of operations, where the air forces of the western allies had a very large numerical and significant qualitative superiority (in particular, thanks to the use of automatic anti-aircraft fire control systems for air defense), and therefore only a small number of aircraft of this type was sent by the Germans to the Eastern Front.
It is also worth saying that on the Soviet-German front, the Red Army Air Force had only numerical, but not technological, superiority over the Luftwaffe forces, and, in addition, the Soviet Air Force was even numerically smaller than the Western Alliance Air Force, and operated mainly only in the front zone. without risking, after the bloody lessons of 1941, to make long-distance raids deep into enemy territory. Thus, according to the Nazi leaders, the aircraft of the Soviet Union posed a comparatively less threat than the Anglo-American aircraft.
At the same time, starting in 1942, the Western Allies carried out a systematic strategic air offensive, making missions since 1943 against the industrial centers of Germany itself, and as a result, in 1944, achieved complete domination in the skies of Europe. All this forced the Germans to use technically less advanced or outdated aircraft models on the Eastern Front to a greater extent than on the Western Front, and that is why the high-speed Ju-188 was created and used primarily as a vehicle to oppose the Western alliance.
Ju-188 in their characteristic snake camouflage. At the base of the wings, torpedoes are clearly visible - in the version of the naval base torpedo bomber, this machine could take not one, but two "fish" in overload at once. In the nose of the fuselage, the antennas of the radar used in naval navigation and to search for enemy ships are visible.
The very first sorties of these vehicles were carried out as high-altitude naval reconnaissance and mine-planters in the North Sea, i.e. acting over areas where, if destroyed in battle, a new type of aircraft would not become an enemy trophy. And I must say that for combat reasons, in the first few months of 1943, not a single Ju-188 was lost during such missions, which was one of the proofs of the outstanding flight qualities of this model (however, a number of machines were badly damaged and then written off, however, they were not counted as combat losses). Aircraft of this type made their first combat mission as bombers on the night of August 18/19, 1943, successfully carrying out (by the forces of an experienced squadron, together with other Luftwaffe units that used other types of aircraft) the bombing of the city of Lincoln in Great Britain. Other raids followed, and although the damage done to British industry was relatively small, these bombings showed that it was too early for the Luftwaffe to write off.
The scheme used by the Nazis during the commissioning of this bomber deserves special attention. To retrain pilots for a new type of aircraft, the German command in the spring of 1943 created a "special squadron 188", through which the first pilots recruited from the squadrons that were planned to be transferred to the Ju-188 passed through, and who had not only great flight experience, but also the experience of the instructor work. Then, after some time of training, they were assigned back to the subunits, where they formed their own “training squadrons” (mainly on the basis of the “headquarters staff”) and passed on their experience to other pilots of the “gruppen” or newcomers arriving, in parallel with entering their unit. aircraft of a new type. A little later, several dozen machines of this type were transferred to flight schools for training cadet pilots to immediately fly on a bomber, which they planned to make one of the main ones in the Luftwaffe.
Ju-188 A-3 - the antennas of the FuG 200 search radar are clearly visible, although they reduced the speed characteristics, but made it possible to navigate and search for targets at night or in poor visibility conditions. The British sailors complained very much that, it would seem, when the weather or time of day allowed them to calmly go their course, fearing only mines and submarines, because of low clouds or at night, several of these nasty machines suddenly appeared and released their torpedoes.
The first unit fully re-equipped with the Ju-188 bomber modification in the Nazi Air Force was the headquarters detachment and then the II group of the 6th bomber squadron, followed by the IV and I groups of the same squadron, and then other units. For a number of reasons, primarily due to limited production, from the end of 1943 to the end of 1944, only three squadrons were armed with aircraft of this model - KG 2, KG 6 and KG 26, and then not completely, but only some of their units. In addition, the KG 66 had one squadron (4th staffel) flying the Ju-188, as well as the KG 200 also had a separate squadron operating on this type of aircraft.
The use of the Ju-188 as a night bomber peaked in the first half of 1944, and in this role it proved to be relatively successful. However, after the landing of the forces of the Western Alliance in Normandy, as a result of an incorrect operational decision of the Luftwaffe leadership, the Ju-188 bombing formations were literally destroyed. The fact is that, relying on high speed even with a bomb load and, as it was believed, sufficient defensive armament of these machines, the Nazi leadership ordered all available forces to carry out massive bomb-assault strikes of the Allied landing zone in Normandy - and ordered to conduct combat missions not only at night, but also during the day. However, the Anglo-American Air Force over the English Channel in the summer of 1944 had an undeniable advantage over the Luftwaffe, as a result of which the German pilots found themselves in a situation in which the bomber units of the Red Army Air Force found themselves in the summer of 1941: by direct order from the "top" squadron Ju-188 and other attack aircraft rushed to attack the landing zone with the highest concentration of air defense weapons, with absolute air supremacy of the forces of the western alliance, and were almost completely destroyed. Thus, instead of repeating the successes of the 1940 French campaign, the Luftwaffe's forces suffered a major defeat and lost their combat effectiveness to a serious extent.
As a result of this, some German Air Force units, which suffered huge losses in battles for several weeks and even days, refused to continue combat missions under the threat of an armed mutiny, demanding a withdrawal to the rear for reorganization, and in general, the Luftwaffe leadership was forced to admit the erroneousness of their actions and carry out the demands of their pilots, transferring the remnants of the once strong "Kampfgeschwader" to the rear bases.
It is interesting to compare this situation with other countries participating in the war. Probably, for the Soviet Air Force this was simply an unthinkable situation - pilots who refused to carry out combat missions in wartime due to high unit losses, most likely, would have been immediately shot by order of a quickly assembled "troika" court (consisting of a unit commander, commissar and the senior officer of the squadron), or, at least, they would be written off to the penalty boxes (for example, to the “air penal battalion” - by the same gunner on the Il-2). At the same time, in the Anglo-Saxon Air Force, after the unit reached the level of losses of 6-10%, and even more so in 15-20% of the flight personnel, combat missions were necessarily terminated, and some were assigned to rest and replenishment (thus, in contrast, unfortunately, from the Soviet Air Force, its combat effectiveness and the backbone of experienced veteran pilots remained).
The Ju-188 in the reconnaissance-bomber version enters the target area for reconnaissance - the best time was considered a night flight, calculated so that with the first rays of dawn it would be over the enemy's territory, quickly carry out reconnaissance and return at maximum speed (when returning in the light of day were less likely to fall prey to their anti-aircraft gunners or night fighters).
One way or another, but it was in the summer of 1944 that the remnants of experienced pilots of German bomber squadrons were out of action in the skies over northern France, after which these once formidable units ceased to pose a really serious threat to the allies. The Luftwaffe could no longer restore their former combat capability - a shortage of trained pilots and a shortage of aviation fuel began to affect, as a result of which the last bombing raid against British cities using the Ju-188 was recorded on September 19, 1944.
The Ju-188 proved to be most effective as high-speed reconnaissance aircraft (recall that about half of the aircraft of this type produced were precisely reconnaissance options). During the second half of 1943, these machines were adopted by four long-range reconnaissance detachments, and by the end of 1944, Ju-188 (along with aircraft of other models) were already part of ten such units and were used in all theaters from Italy to Norway and from Belarus to France.
In particular, the long-range naval reconnaissance detachment 1. (F) / 124, based in Norway, operated with units of the 26th bomber squadron against the Allied ships traveling as part of sea convoys to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. For the first time, the Ju-188 from the long-range high-altitude reconnaissance detachments appeared on the Soviet-German front in September 1943, and since then their number has steadily increased. It should also be noted that in most Soviet front-line units, for almost a year they did not know anything about the appearance of a new universal attack aircraft from the enemy (although the British shot down the first Ju-188 on the night of October 8-9, 1943, and some time later, after studying the trophy, reported in the USSR about a new type of German bomber), tk. air defense units and pilots of the Soviet fighter aircraft, apparently, took it for the well-known Ju-88 (however, indeed, having a reason for this).
At the same time, it should be especially noted the unique work of the Soviet foreign intelligence, which, according to a number of researchers, at the very beginning of 1943 (i.e. when the Germans had just completed the final design improvements and barely began to build the first small-scale copies of the Ju-188) reported to the Kremlin on the appearance of a new type of bomber among the Germans and, possibly, even provided partial copies of the design documentation. However, according to the testimony of Western authors, the Soviet side either did not attach importance to the received data, or “modestly decided to keep silent” about the information received, but somehow, nothing of the information received came to London (perhaps this was due to the fact that, according to the Soviet spy network, the new bomber by the Germans was intended primarily for action against England, and not against the USSR).
And until the fall of 1943, i.e. Until the British themselves obtained a copy of the downed Ju-188 as a trophy, the special services of the Foggy Albion were “blissfully unaware” for several months that a new type was operating against them as a scout, target designator, torpedo bomber and night bomber German car. When the British transferred the first results of the survey of the captured aircraft to the USSR, and then the Ju-188 began to be used in increasing quantities on the Soviet-German front (including becoming Soviet trophies), then in the Soviet Union official instructions were developed with indicating the vulnerabilities of the new German aircraft, which were sent to the fighter units.
Ju 188 shot down over England during a bomber mission by a night fighter.
Despite a number of technical advantages, nevertheless, as a bomber (especially during operations during the day), the Ju-188 on the Western Front did not show particularly outstanding results, and the formations rearmed for machines of this type also suffered almost the same losses as those using the Ju-88 and Do-217. Attempts by the Luftwaffe to use the Ju-188 in daytime bombing missions against the Allies advancing in Italy, and later landing in France, were unsuccessful, and since the summer of 1944, all Ju-188 bomber units were used against the forces of the Western Alliance exclusively at night.
At the same time, on the Soviet-German front, it was the Ju-188 that proved itself quite successfully throughout the year - from the fall of 1943 to the fall of 1944, being used not only as a reconnaissance aircraft, but also as a bomber. In fact, due to their high speed and good altitude, as well as weak tactical cooperation between various branches of the Soviet troops, and, one might say, due to the lack of a developed night fighter aircraft in the Red Army Air Force, these aircraft became almost the only large-scale German bombers that could quite successfully carry out not only night, but also day missions, and even in 1944-45.
According to the Luftwaffe pilots who flew the Ju-188, the most dangerous among the day fighters of the Western Front were the American Mustangs and the British Spitfires, partly Tempests and Lightnings, and among the day fighters of the Eastern Front - the Yak-3 and to a lesser extent La-7, which had high speed and good altitude. Among the Allied night fighters in the West, German pilots were especially wary of the high-speed, well-armed and radar-equipped British Mosquitoes. At the same time, the Germans noted that on the Eastern Front, Soviet night fighters could almost not be feared even in 1944, tk. the Ju-188 pilot could become their victim only by accident (due to the extremely poor training of Soviet pilots of night fighter aircraft, the weak use of radars in the Air Force and the Air Defense Forces of the Red Army, and also (according to the Germans) due to the actual lack of specialized models of night fighters in the USSR).
Knowing this, one can only marvel at the courage and patience of the Soviet soldiers who fought in the ground forces, who even in 1944 had to withstand the attacks of German bombers. It would seem - "Well, that's it, the nightmare of 1941-42 has passed, the difficult and bloody 1943 is over, that's it, we'll drive the German westward!" However, German designers developed, and the German industry began to produce another new type of bomber, which was so difficult for Soviet aviation to shoot down that they could attack our troops with almost impunity under conditions of seemingly operational and tactical superiority of the Red Army Air Force in the air. I don't even want to talk about the high-speed Ju-188 in the reconnaissance versions: it seemed that the Soviet troops had just gotten rid of the hated "frames" (Fw-189), so annoying in 1941-43, and "here on you" Germans, a qualitatively different, excellent scout with excellent quality cameras appears, which was extremely difficult not only to shoot down, but simply to catch up with even the newest Soviet "hawks".
However, despite the good characteristics of the Ju-188, from the fall of 1944, bomber and later torpedo formations were forced to scale back their activities. This happened in connection with the need for the Luftwaffe to concentrate all resources for the air defense of Germany, including due to the growing fuel shortage, and the adoption of the RLM program to stop the production of any aircraft except fighters. In response, the German designers of the Junkers AG concern made an attempt to create a special modification of the Ju-188 R in the "heavy night hunter" version, equipped with a radar and four 20 mm MG-151 cannons or two 30 mm MK103 cannons located in the bow aircraft. However, during the tests, it turned out that the installation of such a powerful weapon critically upsets the balance of the structure, making takeoff and landing extremely dangerous for poorly trained pilots, and the onboard weapons planned for installation had to be reduced. As a result, only a small number of aircraft of this type were used as heavy night fighters, armed with only a pair of 20 mm cannons in the bow, which, of course, was extremely insufficient to combat the four-engined Allied bombers, and it is quite logical that in this role Ju-188 did not show itself in any way.
The photo captured an extremely unpleasant moment for the Anglo-Saxon sailors: the "Avenger" on a combat course, having already dropped a torpedo.
At the same time, as already noted, reconnaissance modifications of the Ju-188 were very actively used by the Luftwaffe, and not only in 1944, but even until the very end of the war, and this version of the high-speed high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was almost the only one, the production of which was specially preserved not only in the fall of 1944, but even in the spring of 1945.
It can also be noted that in the last months of the war, part of the formations, equipped with both torpedo-bomb and reconnaissance modifications of the Ju-188, were used as an extreme means of supply and even as a means of emergency evacuation of especially important persons from a number of "boilers". Almost all equipment and often weapons were removed from aircraft intended for such missions in order to ensure maximum speed, and special containers were placed in bomb bays and sometimes on external sling for cargo dropped over the territories of the "boilers". If there was a technical capability for landing and there was a task to pick up one of the valuable "entourage", then from the entire crew, only the first pilot took part in the flight. Further, the landing was carried out in the territory occupied by German troops; the cab was loaded, for example, by important Nazi party functionaries or valuable technical specialists who were transported, using Soviet terminology, to the “mainland”. In particular, similar missions were made to the "Ruhr cauldron" in the west, and in the east to Courland and East Prussia. At the same time, during such sorties, thanks to good speed data, the Ju-188 suffered fairly small losses relative to other, less high-speed German aircraft of other types.
Due to the fact that the Ju-188 was adopted by Germany quite late, and in large quantities began to be produced when the Reich began to lose all its satellites, the Ju-188 was delivered only to the "Real Fuerza Aerea Hungaru" (Royal Hungarian Air Force) … In total, this country - the most loyal Nazi ally - received, according to various sources, from 12 to 20 or even up to 42 Ju-188 of various modifications, which were actively used in battles against the advancing Soviet troops, and later against Romania, which sided with the anti-Hitler coalition. In addition, according to some reports, several copies of the Ju-188 were transferred and used in the Air Force of the Italian fascist "Republic of Salo" (not to be confused with the Svidomo "Republic of Salo"!
) and in the Croatian Air Force.
A Soviet fighter shot down a Ju-188 in summer camouflage of the Eastern Front.
As a conclusion, we can say that, despite the fact that this aircraft was almost not remembered by the Soviet soldiers who fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, and that even today it is known only to a small circle of aviation enthusiasts, the Ju-188 proved to be a good universal bomber. as a very formidable all-weather torpedo bomber and as an extremely difficult to shoot down high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
Yes, it was not some kind of masterpiece of German aircraft construction, but thanks to the deep reworking of its predecessor, the Ju-88, this machine became a reliable "workhorse", while "running very fast", i.e. which developed a very high speed for a propeller-driven bomber of the forties, comparable in some modifications to the speed of many fighters of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.
If not for a number of organizational mistakes of the Hitlerite leadership, then in the hands of the Nazis could have a fleet of extremely difficult to intercept strike aircraft, which would have allowed them to continue the air terror campaign in 1943-45, and, possibly, even change the course of the war, but by fortunately for all of us, this did not happen.
Used sources and literature:
Militärarchiv Freiburg. Ju-188. Produktionsprogramme.
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Vajda F A., Dancey P. G. German Aircraft Industry and Production 1933-1945. Society of Automotive Engineers Inc., 1998.
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