HISTORY

Horror Over Kalamaki

Richard Plos

Up to the raid on the airfield of Kalamaki south of Athens on November 17, 1943, the 486th Bomb Squadron had not

lost a single airplane over a target. Fate turned its back on the crew of 2/Lt. John D. O’Leary. His Mitchell ended up

in a flat spin and inverted after several flak hits. And to top it off, the unlucky B-25 was also taking hits from JG 27

fighters.

L’enfant Terrible arrives

Obfw. Heinrich Bartels became a member of JG

27 in August, 1943. He came to 11./JG 27 after being expelled by JG 5 Eismeer. He had committed

several “indiscretions” there, but on the other

hand, he was an ace with 49 kills. He rounded his

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score to fifty in his new environment on October 1,

1943, when he was credited with the shot down of

a Boston northwest of the island of Kos.

After that, Bartels began to add to his tally quickly, with his Bf 109G-6. Over the month of October,

he added fourteen kills, and over November, he

would paint another ten kill marks on his rudder.

But…

Bartels claimed four American P-38s on November 15 in the span of a mere three minutes

(1310 – 1312h), and these kills brought his score

to seventy. A small celebration followed and the

photographs of a smiling Bartels, in front of the

rudder of his airplane displaying seven rows of

ten kills each, is well known. The problem comes

in the fact that the Americans didn’t report any

Lightning losses that day. All of them returned

from their respective missions. Bartels wasn’t

the only one that day who was busy painting kill

marks on his aircraft. JG 27 fighter pilots claimed

a total of fourteen P-38s! Besides Bartels, this

included, for example, Hptm. Joachim Kirschner

(Stab.IV/JG 27) who also claimed four, and Fw.

Ernst Hackl (12./JG 27), with a claim of three.

Two days later, Bartels was credited with another

P-38 along with two B-25s that were a part of an

attack on Kalamaki. In reality, though, the 340th

BG, who conducted the raid, only lost one aircraft.

Although Bartels did attack the stricken aircraft,

it was brought down by flak.

Bartels was an interesting character even so. He

was a native Austrian born in Linc and wasn’t

exactly a subscriber of discipline. He also belonged to a group of flyers that, to put it politely, felt no affinity for the Nazi regime. His road

took him through JG 26, where he claimed two

kills in combat against British fighters, to JG 5.

He had good success against the Soviets while operating over the Northern Front, and he

would spend more than a year and a half there.

He would hit 46 kills before the patience regarding his behavior ran out and he was shipped

off to JG 27. He stayed with this unit until his

death, first with 11./JG 27 and then with 15./JG 27.

photo: ČTK

Fighter wing JG 27 had been active in practically

every battle zone that the Luftwaffe was involved

in during the Second World War. Its duties began

to be carried out on the Western Front, followed

by a move to the Balkans, to later support the

invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941. But

three months prior, I./JG 27, commanded by “Edu”

Neumann, relocated to Africa to be followed by

II./JG 27 five months later, commanded by Wolfgang Lippert. The unit was made complete in

Africa in December after the arrival of III./JG 27,

and would remain there with short stints of its

groups in other areas until November, 1942, when

it transferred its remaining assets to JG 77 and

was evacuated.

After their rest period and rearmament, the

group’s components operated in France, over Sicily, and within the Defense of the Reich system.

In May, 1943, IV./JG 27 was newly formed at Kalamaki airfield in Greece, which then transferred

over to Romania to defend the oilfields of Ploesti. It was united with II./JG 27 and Stab./JG 27 at

Kalamaki after returning from that unsuccessful

mission. The unit was tasked with the interception of Allied raids that were designed to support

landings on several Greek islands, and to defend

their own bombers. The Allied landings in France

in June, 1944, brought about a need to relocate

both groups of JG 27 from Kalamaki to “hotter”

fronts.

Heinrich Bartels was a fighter pilot with a low sense of discipline. He also did not hide his disdain for the Nazi regime.

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