Pöhs and Späte
Text: Jan Bobek
Illustration: Antonis Karydis
Cat. No. 84212
The fates of military aviators can be intricate and interconnected. Such were the lives of the Austrian Josef Pöhs and the German Wolfgang Späte.
Pöhs was born on March 14, 1912, in Altkettenhof No. 7, in what is now Schwechat, Vienna. His father Leopold, a warehouse clerk, came from Mährisch Kromau (Moravský Krumlov), while his mother Berta Nowotny was Viennese. An Austrian proverb says every Austrian has a Czech grandmother, and Pöhs was no exception, his paternal grandmother was Anna Chvátal.
Pöhs became a glider pilot and worked as a mechanic at the Aspern aeroclub. In 1934, he joined the Austrian armed forces and, after qualifying as a military pilot, became an NCO in the Austrian Air Force aerobatic team. After the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich, “Joschi” Pöhs was assigned to 2./JG 76 (later 5./JG 54), and took part in the fighting in Poland, France, and over Great Britain. During this period, he achieved seven victories and was promoted to the rank of Leutnant.
In January 1941, Oberleutnant Wolfgang Späte joined 5./JG 54. Until then, he had served as a reconnaissance pilot, had worked as a glider test pilot before the war, and in 1938 had won the 19th Rhön Gliding Competition. Späte’s parents came from Dresden, and his father Kurt was a wealthy agricultural entrepreneur. Born on September 8, 1911, Späte is usually listed as a native of Dresden.
However, in his 1990s correspondence with Jaroslav Hradec, he stated he was born in Podersam (Podbořany) in the Sudetenland, then part of the Kingdom of Bohemia. His father owned farmland there, later lost during Czechoslovak land reform in the 1920s. The most likely explanation is that Späte was born in Podbořany but baptized in Dresden (no local birth record exists). His sister was born in Dresden, while his youngest brother Helmut, killed in France in July 1943 as a night fighter, was born in Podbořany on August 17, 1917. The family thus lived between Saxony and the Bohemian lands.
During the attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, Pöhs shot down a Blenheim and a Hurricane. Späte scored his first victory with another Blenheim, and two more bombers of this type were shot down by the commander of 5./JG 54, Oberleutnant Hubert “Hubs” Mütherich. It is not particularly surprising that this trio of officers became the most successful fighter pilots of 5./JG 54 during the first three months of combat against the Soviet Union. Their Staffel, which was part of II./JG 54, was deployed in the Baltic region and went through heavy fighting, some of which, according to one JG 54 officer, could be compared to battles against the RAF.
When Mütherich was killed on September 9, 1941, in combat with Soviet fighters, he had 43 victories to his credit. On the same day, Pöhs recorded his 41st kill, while Späte claimed his 29th opponent and took command of 5./JG 54. Pöhs then achieved two more victories but was transferred in mid-September as an instructor to Erg.Gr./JG 54.
The aircraft “Black 9,” depicted on the box art, was for a long time Josef Pöhs’s personal aircraft. It is best documented in a photograph taken from the rear left. The issue is that there are patches of snow visible on the ground around the aircraft. Axel Urbanke pointed this out in Luftwaffe im Focus No. 18 and, based on this detail, dates the photograph to the end of September 1941. Axel was able to identify that only one victory marking on the rudder does not refer to a Soviet aircraft, which corresponds to Späte’s score at the end of September. However, according to researcher Georg Morrison, Späte rarely flew “Black 9.” His personal aircraft was “Black 4.” He conducted several test flights with “Black 9” on August 16, 1941, then flew it again on September 24, October 5, and finally on February 22, 1942. The victory markings on the decal sheet in the kit are therefore designed to represent how the aircraft would have appeared when “Joschi” Pöhs had this number of victories.
In May 1942, Wolfgang Späte became the commander of Erprobungskommando 16, which was tasked with testing rocket and jet aircraft. At that time, Pöhs was flying at the Rechlin test center, but by the end of June he began familiarizing himself with the Me 163 A within Späte’s team. During the development of the Komet, Pöhs devised several design solutions, including the transport dolly for moving the Me 163 on the ground. He was tragically killed on December 30, 1943, in Bad Zwischenahn in an accident involving Me 163 AV8 (CD+IM). This aircraft had previously been most often flown by his colleague Rudolf Opitz.
Späte survived the war within JG 7, flying the Me 262. In 1956, he joined the Bundeswehr and became a flight safety inspector. Given his hazardous experience testing the Me 163, he was well qualified. He later authored and co-authored several books.