[Gilly]

Stumbled over this last night. As it's 72 years to the day I thought I'd share:
No Luftwaffe units were worked harder during Europe's final weeks of peace than were the cherished groups of Ju.87 Stukas, which were being remorselessly groomed for the leading role in the war Hitler was determined to launch against Poland. One of the more experienced Stuka outfits, Group I of the 76th Sturzkampfgeschwader, commanded by Captain Walter Sigel, was sent up from its usual base in Austria to Cottbus, sixty miles southeast of Berlin, as part of the Luftwaffe's general deployment of its strike forces toward the east. It was Sigel's pride that his was one of the early units to be so deployed, especially since I/St.G.76 had been handpicked for a showpiece demonstration to be held for the benefit of the senior Luftwaffe commanders, including Generals Hugo Sperrle, Bruno Loerzer, and Wolfram von Richthofen. Sigel's outfit was equipped with the lastest Ju.87B's, mounting new Jumo 211D engines rated at 1,200 horsepower, nearly twice as powerful as those used in Spain. Sigel hoped to stun the onlooking air commodores with a mass formation diving attack of the entire group, twenty-seven aircraft in all. He succeeded, but in a way nobody could have dreamed of.

The demonstration was scheduled for the morning of August 15 [1939]. The hour chosen, six [a.m.], was undoubtedly selected for the dramatic postsunrise effect it would offer. Just prior to the scheduled takeoff time, a weather reconnaissance plane landed at Cottbus with a report on
conditions over the strike area, a wooded section of Silesia near Neuhammer-am-Queis, thirty minutes' flight time away. Conditions were far from ideal. The weather pilot told Captain Sigel that it was clear above 6000 feet, but below he would find seven-tenths cloud cover all the way down to 2500 feet. Below that, however, visibility was good. This meant that Sigel would have to trust finding a hole in the clouds over the strike area, lead his group down through the murk, and and break into the clear with about five seconds left to line up on the target, release bombs, and pull out. As group commander, Sigel had three choices: to request postponement of the strike until the weather was clear all the way down, to ask that the exercise be scrubbed, or to carry on as planned. Since Sigel was a German officer, and since a galaxy of fearsome Luftwaffe generals were gathering to personally witness I/St.G.76's star turn, only the last option was thinkable. Shortly after 5:30am, Sigel led his group off the field at Cottbus.

Once Sigel left the ground, he was in constant radio communication with the twenty-six other Stukas forming up in squadron strength behind him, but there was no radio link between his airborne group and the strike area at Neuhammer. Thus he could not know of the disaster in the making. Between the time the weather plane had surveyed the area and returned to Cottbus and the time Sigel's group neared the strike zone, early morning ground fog formed into an opaque white blanket covering almost the entire area, rising in places to merge with the fringes of cloud. No more dangerous weather conditions for a dive-bombing attack could have been created.

Sigel, with his Stukas arrayed behind him, approached Neuhammer at an altitude of 12,000 feet, estimating his position by dead reckoning and upon checkpoints which were in the clear on the flight out from Cottbus. Above, a pale blue windowpane sky; below, a sea of rolling clouds tinged with red. The generals were waiting. Sigel rolled the Stuka on its back and shoved the stick forward. The altimeter needle began unwinding in a futile race to keep up with the altitude that was being eaten away at the rate of 375 feet per second. Sigel's bomber plunged into the dirty gray wet muck at a dive angle of seventy degrees doing nearly 300 miles per hour. Closed in by the white world about him, his eyes straining to see past the mist being churned by the prop, Sigel felt time drag. By now, the entire group, echeloned out on his wings, were hurtling through the clouds with him. Where was the clear air promised by the weather pilot?
Any instant now...

Then the horrified Sigel saw not two thousand feet of clear space, but a limitless canopy of trees rushing toward him. Already tensed to the breaking point, his reactions were instantaneous. He screamed a warning to the others and slammed the stick back. Through the blur of a grayout, Sigel saw that he missed death by a matter of feet; the Stuka was zipping through a firebreak below the treetops. His warning came too late for the two dive-bombers riding his tail. They plunged into the earth, sirens wailing, and exploded -- as did all nine Stukas of the second wave. The high squadron's Ju.87's convulsively came out of their dives, but two of them stalled out and smashed into the trees to join the eleven others. Fragments of metal and flesh were scattered across a wide area, and fires started in the summer-dry secondary undergrowth. Plumes of smoke, pyres for the twenty-six airmen who had died before breakfast, rose lazily into the air, blending with the fog that began to dissipate not long afterwards.

The tragedy at Neuhammer, worst of its kind in the recorded history of aviation, was kept secret for a long time afterward. OKL was notified immediately, of course, as was the Fuhrer. One account has it that when Hitler was given the news, he "stared speechlessly out of the window for ten minutes." The reaction is believable; Hitler was a mystic, a believer in astrology, and the wiping out of thirteen of his vaunted Stukas at one stroke was surely an omen. His war against Poland, in which the Luftwaffe was counted on to play a decisive role, was scheduled to begin sixteen days later.
Cajus Bekker- Angriffshohe 4000

As an additional note it seems one Hans Ulrich Rudel was destined for this group but ended up, much to his disappointment at the time, being sent to a recon group.