HEINKEL HE 111
The cockpit of the Heinkel He 111 bomber, particularly in the widely produced P and H series variants, featured a distinctive fully glazed, asymmetrical “glasshouse” or “fishbowl” nose that replaced the earlier stepped design, providing the pilot and navigator/bomb-aimer with exceptional all-round visibility through curved upper panels and optically flat lower sections while offering minimal armour protection against flak or frontal attacks. The pilot sat on the port side with no solid floor beneath his feet, the rudder pedals mounted on arms to enhance downward vision, and his instrument panel split between a left-side wooden board for flight and navigation instruments—some sections folding aside for better takeoff and landing views—and a compact right-side panel for engine monitoring gauges. The control column was centrally mounted yet could be swung over to the starboard side in an emergency if the pilot became incapacitated, while an adjustable window above the pilot’s seat allowed cloth covers to be draped against searchlight glare during night operations. Beside the pilot, the navigator/bomb-aimer occupied a folding tip-up seat that could be tilted aside, enabling him to move forward into a prone position on a platform in the extreme nose for bombing runs using the Lotfe 7D bombsight or to man the offset nose-mounted machine gun. Sliding and removable glazing panels facilitated rapid emergency exits without retreating into the fuselage, and the entire nose compartment connected via a bulkhead hatch and passageway to the rear crew stations. Ceiling-mounted instruments further preserved the pilot’s forward view, while the asymmetric layout—with greater port-side curvature—ensured the pilot an unobstructed sightline past the starboard-offset bomb-aimer and gun positions. This innovative stepless cockpit design improved low-level navigation, target acquisition, and defensive awareness yet left the crew vulnerable, defining the He 111’s operational character throughout the Second World War.
A little further west from Woolston, England, the Royal Navy base at Portland came under attack from the Heinkel 111s of III.Gruppe / Kampfgeschwader 55 (KG55) on 15 September 1940, and among the units taking part was the 8th Staffel of that KG55 formation. Although we cannot know if he specifically took part in that raid, Leutnant Hans Thurner (seated here at the controls) of an 8./KG55 He 111 became one of the most highly decorated Luftwaffe bomber pilots of the war and took part in the Battle of Britain and The Blitz. In this posed photograph, he is seen with his Great Dane dog and two crew members. Hans Thurner was born on 24 October 1918 in Innsbruck, Austria, and entered the Luftwaffe in 1938 as a Fahnenjunker, receiving training as a Kampfflieger before being commissioned Leutnant and assigned to the 8. Staffel of Kampfgeschwader 55. In the autumn of 1940 he flew numerous sorties against England, and from June 1941 he took part in operations over the Soviet Union. On 6 August 1941 he was awarded the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes as Leutnant and pilot in the III. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 55 in recognition of 132 combat sorties flown against England between 5 July 1940 and 31 May 1941, together with further successful missions on the Eastern Front. In September 1942 he transferred as Oberleutnant and Technischer Offizier to Kampfgeschwader 6, with which he again operated against England, later flying in the Mediterranean theatre from the summer of 1943 and returning to raids over England in 1944. He received the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold and, early in 1944, was appointed Kommandeur of the I. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 6, being promoted to Hauptmann on 1 May 1944. Thurner’s luck finally ran out when he was killed on 11 June 1944, despite the lucky horseshoe hanging in his cockpit. On that day, while flying a Junkers Ju 188 A-2 coded 3E+EB in defence against the Allied invasion of Normandy, he and his crew failed to return from a mission and were reported missing; his remains were later recovered approximately ten kilometres southeast of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, and he was buried at the German war cemetery at La Cambe. By the time of his death he had completed more than 500 Feindflüge. Posthumously, on 17 September 1944, he was awarded the Eichenlaub to the Ritterkreuz (the 587th such award) as Hauptmann and Gruppenkommandeur of the I. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 6 for his many successful sorties on the Eastern Front, the Italian front, over England in the first months of 1944, and finally on the Invasion front.
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JUNKERS JU 87 STUKA
The cockpit of the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka was a tandem two-seat enclosure designed for a pilot in the forward position and a rear gunner-radio operator immediately behind, protected from the engine by a firewall ahead of the wing centre section that housed the fuel tanks. Constructed as an all-metal structure with an oval fuselage cross-section, it featured a distinctive greenhouse-style canopy of Plexiglas panels set in a strong welded steel frame that divided the crew stations into two compartments, each fitted with its own sliding hood for independent access and egress. Early A-series aircraft used twin radio masts on the aft canopy, later simplified to a single forward mast on B and subsequent models, while the D-series introduced an aerodynamically refined canopy offering improved visibility and greater internal space together with increased armour plating. The pilot sat on his parachute pack against a rear cushion and padded headrest, facing a Revi reflector gunsight for the wing-mounted MG 17 machine guns and an instrument panel that mixed flight, navigation and engine gauges, a layout sometimes criticised for readability under combat stress. A strengthened transparent window in the cockpit floor allowed the pilot to sight the target during the steep dive, while controls for the automatic pull-out dive-brake system were readily at hand to recover the aircraft even if the pilot blacked out under high g-forces. The rear crewman faced aft, operating a flexible 7.92 mm MG 15 machine gun (later upgraded to the high-rate dual-barrel MG 81Z) mounted on a flexible ring, and managed the radio equipment while also sitting on his parachute. At the rear of the cockpit a canvas-covered bulkhead could be breached in an emergency, permitting the crew to escape into the main fuselage. The overall arrangement emphasised robustness and functionality for dive-bombing and ground-attack missions, with the fixed undercarriage sirens providing audible speed cues that complemented the pilot’s instruments, and later variants adding further armour and refined ergonomics while retaining the essential tandem layout that defined the Stuka’s combat identity throughout the war.
Oberst Walter Sigel (1906-1944) was born on 12 January 1906 in Ulm and served as an officer in the Luftwaffe from 1934 until his death, rising to the rank of Oberst; as commanding officer of Sturzkampfgeschwader 76 he led the Junkers Ju 87 demonstration at Neuhammer on 15 August 1939 that became known as the Neuhammer Stuka-Unglück when low cloud caused thirteen other crews to crash fatally while he himself barely pulled out, and on the opening day of the Second World War he directed the German bombers in the attack on Wieluń. He received the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes on 21 July 1940 as Hauptmann and Gruppenkommandeur of I./Sturzkampfgeschwader 3 for the outstanding success of his Gruppe in the Polish campaign and especially in the West, where his personal leadership from the front enabled effective strikes against troop concentrations in the Libramont–Givet area of southern Belgium, the Maginot Line south of Sedan, enemy tanks near Laon, columns near La Fère, St. Quentin, Lens, Arras, Béthune and Amiens, as well as against destroyers southwest of Calais and the harbour of Dunkirk, repeatedly facilitating the advance of German ground forces and repelling armoured counter-attacks. Promoted further, he was awarded the Eichenlaub (116th recipient) on 2 September 1942 as Oberstleutnant and Geschwaderkommodore of Schlachtgeschwader 3 in recognition of his continued command achievements during the air battles over the English Channel, in Greece, over Crete and throughout the North African campaign; Sigel was killed on 8 May 1944 when his aircraft crashed into the Trondheimsfjord in Norway.
Source :
"Luftwaffe Bombers of the Blitz 1940-1941" by Andy Saunders
https://alifrafikkhan.blogspot.com/2017/10/foto-pilot-luftwaffe-dengan-pesawatnya.html
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