HS-123 page 3

Josef Menapace, adjudant of the 1./Sch.G 1, preferred the indestructible Hs-123 to the Bf 109E. In August of 1942 Menapace had 650 combat missions behind him.

Hauptman Josef Menapace flew more than 700 combat missions with LG 2, SchlG 1, 2 and got 2 aerial victories. He was killed in action in 06 October 1943.

From 1942 to 1943, the markings and identification numbers of the Hs-123 were changed. Planes of the 5./(S)LG 2 with the assault emblem, echelon symbol and fighter-plane triangle behind the cross.

The emblems are gone, the triangle is painted over, a bar is painted on as the symbol of the second group; on the third plane in the picture it extends into the cross emblem. Meanwhile the "timely" armament consists of SC 50 with Dinort staffs.

Many of the British troop casualties caused by the dive-bombers on Crete came about as a result of a typical piece of Luftwaffe improvisation. In order to increase the killing power of their SC 50 and SD 70 bombs against infantry caught out in the open (which was considered effect enough because the bombs tended to explode upward on contact with the rocky ground) the Stuka crews adopted a new fusing system to give the weapon a more lethal lateral spread. This device was the Dinorstäb, named after the commander of St.G. 2 and which was initiated at this time, as Friderich Lang explained:

"The Dinorstäb was invented at the middle of May 1941 at the Molai airfield where the I./St.G. 2 were under Kommodore Oberstleutnant Dinort. The devices were supposed to detonate the bombs before they reached the ground and scatter their charge and explosives more effectively. The first trials were with 60cm-long willow sticks which we screwed into the screw hole on the point of the 50 Kg bombs. The trial area, marked out with a white sheet, was a wheat field with some olive trees scattered in it. You could easily see the depth of the shallow crater and the scatter effect around it by the damage to the wheat.

The willow stick did not work out since it brook off and did not detonated the bomb before impact. The next trial was done with even lengths of round metal rod. They also did not came up to expectations. The rod became embedded in the ground and the bomb detonated too late. We were successful with the third attempt. On the end of the metal rods we welded an 8cm-diameter metal disc. The bomb now detonated at about 30cm above the ground. The scatter effect was high, as expected.

The rods were, at the beginning, made in our own workshop wagons and first used when we attacked Crete. Later they were made by industry under the name of Zunderabstandstäb.

References:

a) "Stuka" by Gebhard Aders, Werner Held, 1989 Shiffer Publishing. ISBN: 0-88740-216-X

b) "Wing Masters" Magazine, Nº 17 July-August 2000

c) "Luftwaffe 1935-1945 Pt.1" - Camouflages & Markings 1 (Eng. Text) by Jaroslaw Wróbel, 1994 AJ-Press. ISBN: 83-86208-08-2

d) "Luftwaffe 1935-1945 Pt.3" - Camouflages & Markings 3 (Eng. Text) by Robert Michulec, 1996 AJ-Press. ISBN: 83-86208-49-X