It’s the evening of the 21st of February 1945.
In the dark skies over Northern Germany the moon has risen and the golden stars shine in the sky, brightly and clearly.
The stillness is interrupted by a low, persistent rumble.
Quickly closing in from the distance a stream of British Lancaster heavy bombers is heading towards the city,
ready to unleash yet another night attack to bring the war to a close as soon as possible.
Bursts of anti-aircraft fire erupt from the city defences,
but the flak is too low to hit any Lancasters.
In a BF 110 a radar operator spots the British planes and signals the pilot.
At the controls is the deadly German ace Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer.
The most feared Luftwaffe night fighter pilot of the war.
Almost every British pilot knew about his legacy and destructive accuracy in the air
and prayed not to come face to face with him.
This hunter, prowling in the dark, is aged barely 23.
But in his short time, he has scored more than a hundred victories
and has been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds.
Turning to intercept their quarry, Schnaufer and his crew,
radio operator Fritz Rumpelhardt and gunner Wilhelm Gänsler
plan to ambush the Lancasters as they fly back to their bases.
The BF 110 is shrouded from view by a thin layer of clouds
but soon the men spot The Lancasters flying above as they appear as black silhouettes, backlit by the moon.
Schnauffer identifies his first target.
He approaches the quarry from behind, at a safe distance.
Before he can be spotted, Schnaufer climbs until the BF 110 is just 1,500 ft or 460 metres below the heavy bomber.
But instead of flying behind like a normal interceptor would
Schnauffers plane is equipped with 20 mm cannons, mounted near vertically like organ pipes.
This innovation allows the BF 110s to shoot Allied craft from below.
The ace and his crew are now flying directly below the Lancaster in a blind spot invisible to the British gunners.
He then pulls the nose of the night fighter up sharply
At 20:44 hours Schnauffer squeezes the triggers.
The German night fighters called the noise of the cannons ‘schraege music’, a colloquial term for ‘jazz’.
As the two cannons deliver their deadly tune, piercing violently into the belly of the 4 engine bomber.
The fuel tanks on the right-hand side of the Lancaster are hit and a mighty plume of fire tears apart the winter sky.
The right wing of the bomber is badly damaged,
but the Lancaster holds steady long enough to allow its crew to bail out.
Then, the fiery wreck dives to earth like a comet.
The odds of surviving a crippled bomber in its death throes were about one in four.
Schnaufer and crew are only getting started though.
The sky is full of Lancasters and they will not let them get away easily.
The British know they’re under attack by the dreaded ‘Spook of St. Trond’ as he became known.
Schnaufer pushes his BF 110 into a dive and settles under another Lancaster and pulls the nose up
and claims another victim, and minutes later another.
The ace and his gunner are unforgiving,
more planes burst like novas high above the ground,
while white parachutes blossom into the darkness.
“We saw the crews bailing out,” Schnaufer later wrote.
“We were glad that they would survive and become prisoners”
The British crews are now fully aware of the position of their foes
and engage in a series of violent, corkscrewing manoeuvres.
Schnaufer perfectly mirrors their movements,
twisting his controls to remain always beneath the belly of the beast, avoiding their return fire.
The turns are so extreme that at one moment Wilhelm the gunner fires while their craft is practically vertical.
Radio operator Rumpelhardt in his memoir describes this manoeuvre
“we practically stood upon our wing tip whilst firing”.
Only 19 minutes have passed since the beginning of this extraordinary rampage,
but Schnaufer and crew have managed to shoot down seven bombers, without suffering one single hit.
But in their haste to pursue the bombers, only now they have realised they have crossed enemy lines.
The American anti-aircraft batteries have spotted them and open up on the 23-year-old and his crew.
Schnaufer won’t be put off by the incoming rounds, dodging and weaving while he approaches the eighth catch of the day.
Once again, the young Major dives below the Lancaster and then pulls up sharply.
But at the crucial moment, Gänsler announces that they are out of ammo.
After the war, Rumpelhardt testified that in this particular instance the Lancasters crew of seven survived
because Schräge Musik guns were out of ammo at a critical moment, causing him to break off the attack.
The ace is forced to pull away, getting in the sights of the bomber’s gunners.
The BF 110 is in the crossfire, from below and above,
but Schnaufer somehow manages to evade the hail of fire once again.
Sanity and common sense would dictate that the crew have had enough for the night.
But even though his cannons are empty, he pushes his 110 in full throttle and engages again.
The ‘Schräge Musik’ cannons may be out of ammo, but the four horizontally mounted guns can still do the job.
The BF 110 trails the Lancaster, approaching it from behind, in a classic move.
The fighter is closing the distance.
A few yards more… fire!
But unexpectedly the guns jam!
The last catch of the night flies away to live another day.
Schnaufer has to concede that the battle is over for him and the crew, and he changes course, heading back to base.
On the way back, the crew has to face again the onslaught of the American batteries.
Schnaufer is exhausted, done, weary, totally spent.
Just a few minutes before 22:00 hours the BF 110 lands at its base, at the Gütersloh air strip.
After touching down, Schnaufer, Rumpelhardt and Gänsler
remain silent for a couple of minutes, still stunned by their experience.
Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, the top night-flying ace, has performed his most spectacular feat.
In less than 20 minutes, he and his crew have downed 7 enemy bombers.
Incredibly, he had scored two more kills before 2 am on that same 21st of February – bringing the total to 9.
The Major marked every victory with an icon and date painted on the tail of his favorite plane.
By the end of the war, Schnaufer and his crewmen had destroyed the equivalent of 5 complete squadrons,
putting out of action approximately 850 Allied airmen.
Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer was captured by the British forces after the war in May 1945
and held as a PoW for a year.
After returning to Germany he took care of his family wine business.
On July 13th, 1950, Schnaufer was involved in a car accident in France.
Just two days later, he died in hospital at Bordeaux from his injuries.
Schnaufer's Messerschmitt Bf 110 G-4/U 8 was brought to England after the war.
The aircraft was displayed in London's Hyde Park.
The port-side vertical stabiliser of this twin tailed aircraft, tallying all his victories,
is still preserved at the Imperial War Museum in London.
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