Oberleutnant Oskar Romm, the Gruppenkommandeur of IV./JG 3, was one extremely skilled Luftwaffe pilot who ended his war flying the Focke-Wulf Fw 190D-9
One of Germany’s top fighter aircraft during World War Two, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, flew for the first time on June 1, 1939. It first saw action in September 1941 over northwest France and quickly established its dominance over the Mark V Spitfire, Britain’s greatest fighter at the time.
Most Fw 190s were “A” series models with BMW radial engines. But, towards the end of 1943, the more effective “D” series, propelled by the more powerful Jumo 213 inline, liquid-cooled engine, began to engage US bombers in combat. The Fw 190D-9 had to have a 20-inch portion of its fuselage added slightly ahead of the tail because the larger engine elongated its nose.
The Fw 190D-9 was one of the few fighter types to reach service in World War 2 that had been designed after hostilities began, as Robert Forsyth explains in his book Fw 190D-9 Defence of the Reich 1944-45.
Oberleutnant Oskar Romm, the Gruppenkommandeur of IV./JG 3, was a highly skilled Luftwaffe pilot who finished his war flying the D-9. His personal victory score by the end of April 1945 was 92, with the most recent one coming on March 21 when he shot down one of several Il-2s that had attacked the Prenzlau base of his Gruppe. During the raid, a few Focke-Wulfs were able to take to the skies, and D-9 pilots Feldwebel Oskar Bösch and Leutnant Karl-Alfred Schulte each claimed two more Shturmoviks as their 16th and 3rd claims.
After this incident, Romm continued to fly missions, but five weeks later he would encounter his match over a frontal region where Soviet forces had recently made a breakthrough, as he recalled (Price, At War, pg. 132-133):
‘My last combat mission was on 24 April 1945, to the south of Stettin, when, with my wingman, I attacked a formation of Russian Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft. I selected full emergency power, and with our superior speed, we went right through the Russian fighter escort without difficulty. I was just about to open fire on one of the Ilyushins when my cooling gills suddenly opened automatically. The oil and coolant temperature gauges showed that the engine was overheating. Either my engine had been hit by enemy fire or it had suffered a failure. I broke off the action by rolling over onto my back and pulling away in a steep dive. The Russian fighters endeavoring to follow were soon left behind and abandoned the chase.’
awarded the Knight’s Cross on
Feb. 26, 1944, when his
the score stood at 76 and by war’s
end he was credited with 92
aerial victories.
Sparks and exhaust smoke trailed behind Romm’s “Dora” as he steered it southwest, back toward the German frontline. The engine was broken and overheated. ‘As the last of the lubricating oil burned away between the aluminum pistons and the steel cylinder block,’ he recalled, ‘the engine burst into flames.’ Romm had returned to territory controlled by the Germans, but he was too low to bail out. A short while later, the Jumo cut out, and the Fw 190D-9 crashed to the ground 20 kilometers northwest of Prenzlau, close to Brüssow. He remembered how the plane:
‘. . . proceeded to smear its pieces all over the landscape. However, the same rugged construction that had saved my life in earlier emergency landings proved itself once again.’
Romm sustained a broken skull, facial lacerations, a concussion, and other minor injuries despite the D-9’s tough construction. Thankfully, soldiers at a nearby divisional headquarters noticed his landing and radioed his location to the local Luftwaffe leadership. After that, the soldiers dragged the fighter pilot out of his aircraft and transported him to their headquarters, where an army doctor tried his best to take care of him.
Romm was taken from the crash site a short time later by members of IV./JG 3 under the direction of an officer from the Stabskompanie. He was first taken to a Luftwaffe hospital in Wismar, and then four days later he was taken to a hospital on the Timmendorfer-Strand on the Baltic coast close to Travemünde. He had won the war.
Fw 190D-9 Defence of the Reich 1944–45 is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by: Gareth Hector via Osprey Publishing and EN Archive