Last jump in Berlin?
On April 26, 1945, as the Battle of Berlin is well underway, amid the ruins of the besieged Reich capital being stormed by the Red Army, Adolf Hitler no longer fully trusts the SS. This is why he asks Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the Kriegsmarine, to urgently provide him with a close-protection guard (Leibwache) drawn from the ranks of the famous K-Verbände, those special naval combat units combining combat divers, human torpedoes, explosive motorboats, and midget submarines. The request is transmitted that same day from the Führerhauptquartier by Vizeadmiral Hans-Erich Voss, the Kriegsmarine liaison officer to the Führer. Dönitz immediately takes charge of the matter.
The next day, thirty carefully selected ‘Sturmwikinger’ (‘shock vikings’, the nickname of the K-Verbände fighters) are gathered at the Rerik airfield, west of Rostock, on the Baltic Sea coast. Most are elite Kampfschwimmer (combat swimmers). They are commanded by Oberleutnant Hans-Friedrich Prinzhorn, commander of MEK 60 (Marine-Einsatzkommando 60, a unit that had won glory in attacks against the ports of Normandy and Antwerp).
Thus, on that same April 27, a Junkers Ju 52 carries out an initial reconnaissance of Berlin to find out if it is still possible to land in the capital to drop off this small commando. The crew then discovers that there is only one landing possibility left: the ‘Ost-West’ (east-west) axis, near the Brandenburg Gate, where Hannah Reitsch had landed the day before in a Fi 156 Storch with Generalfeldmarschall von Greim. But the density of Soviet anti-aircraft fire makes the undertaking extremely perilous. The next day, the 28th, a new reconnaissance finds that the planned avenue has meanwhile been littered with shell craters, now making any landing impossible for a trimotor.
There is now only one possibility left: parachute these 30 Kampfschwimmer over Berlin. The jump is scheduled for April 30, but the thick smoke generated by the fires ravaging the city center promises to complicate both the navigation of the Ju 52 crews and the dropping of the combat swimmer paratroopers. The mission is therefore postponed again.
Then, on April 30, astonishing news arrives at the Rerik airbase: Hitler has committed suicide. The last jump over Berlin will therefore not take place.
Author: Yann Mahé / Photo credits: NMD
