COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
radar station looked out across the plains towards Magdeburg and
Berlin.
Only the core of the hotel remained. A massive, ugly, hall and
staircase. An overblown mural covered the walls, towering above its
surroundings, three witches flying in line astern. Innocent enough you
might think. But the Nazi artist obviously intended otherwise for the
way in which they sat astride their broomsticks was powerfully erotic
to say the least!
On the same trip we went further into the Mountains, searching for
an underground V weapons factory in a salt mine near Nordhausen.
There was nothing to identify it from outside. Just a single track
railway leading into a narrow tunnel. A miserable place where VI and
V2 assembly was carried out, far under the hillside, in most primitive
conditions. Inside, even on a fine midsummer's day, the air was cold
and clammy.
Shortly after our visit a large area of the Harz, which included
Broken and this unique plant, was due to be handed over to the
Russians. However it was obvious that they were not going to get their
hands on the contents. The whole place was a hive of activity,
brilliantly lit, its production lines being stripped down and removed
before our eyes.
The Americans in charge of the operation were extremely cagey,
but they opened up when we asked them about the previous
workforce. It was like the horrors of Belsen all over again. A nearby
concentration camp, created for the express purpose, had supplied the
forced labour. Many of the prisoners had lived and died underground.
And there were regular transports to an extermination camp for those
who were no longer able to work.
Due to the Allied bombing campaign much of the German aircraft
industry had been moved to the east, particularly, so we understood,
around Liepzig.
The temptation to see something of it was too great, and one hot
and hazy afternoon I toured the airfields surrounding Halle.
At one several FW 190Ds were parked in the open and at another,
Burg, a number of Mistels, those remarkable pickaback arrangements
with a piloted Me 109 or FW 190 mounted on top of a Ju 88 or He 111.
They were brave men who took them into battle, surviving the hairiest
of take offs, and facing all the normal hazards of ground attack and a
few more besides. For each unmanned bomber, crammed with high
explosive, was released at point blank range by firing a set of explosive
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