Late into the night of February 27, 1943, Oblt. Heinz Knocke and Lt. Dieter Gerhard of 5./JG 1 sat up discussing how best to combat the B-17 bomber formations that were beginning to increasingly menace the German homeland. Gerhard eventually came up with a brilliant suggestion: “Why don’t we try using our own aircraft to drop bombs on the American formations?”
The concept works and is revived
After taking time to try out their idea using Messerschmitt 109 Gs carrying 250-kilogram (550-pound) bombs, Knocke undertook the first such operation on March 22. He recalled: “I fused the bomb, took final aim, and pressed the release button on my stick. My bomb went hurtling down. I watched it fall and banked steeply as I broke away. Then it exploded, exactly in the center of a row of Fortresses. A wing broke off one of them, and two others plunged away in alarm. There’s no sign of fire. It’s followed by the torn wing fluttering down like an autumn leaf. The bomb registered a hit—not only on the Fortresses, but also, it seems, on our own higher brass.”
Although initially successful, the advent of American long-range fighters rendered the bomb-carrying Bf 109s and Fw 190s extremely vulnerable to attack, and the idea was abandoned. Then, in December 1944, the idea was revived at the Rechlin test center, using the Me 262 jet fighter. It was thought that this revolutionary aircraft would be able to evade interception and again scatter the USAAF formations, rendering them more vulnerable to conventional Luftwaffe fighter attack.
Kommando Stamp and the Me 262
To lead the experiments, the single-engine night-fighter ace and holder, Maj. Gerhard Stamp, was transferred from I./JG 300 to form Stamp.” Stamp was probably chosen because of a chance meeting with a professor from Braunschweig at the Merzhausen airbase during June 1944. The professor asked him to test a barometric fuse, which he had developed. Stamp promptly dropped the device from high altitude above the field.
