I Was Chasing One-Elevens

DESCRIPTION: "I was chasing One-Elevens up at Angels 23 (x3) With my canopy so frosted that I couldn't bloody see. Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die...." This and other tales of how an aircraft can be in grave danger while in flight
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1979 (Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear)
KEYWORDS: death soldier technology
FOUND IN: Canada
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 124-125, "I Was Chasing One-Elevens" (1 text, tune referenced)
Roud #29397
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "John Brown's Body" (tune) and references there
cf. "He'll Never Fly Home Again" ("Glory, glory what a hell of a way to die" chorus) and references there
cf. "Heinkel, Come Back to Me" (another song about the Heinkel HE 111)
NOTES [786 words]: Although every problem mentioned in the Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear text is real, the details are sometimes a little inaccurate.
The "One-Eleven," as Hopkins says, was the Heinkel He 111 medium bomber. A strange-looking plane with two engines and a very large nose, "the first HE 111 was a graceful machine with elliptical wings and tail, secretly flown as a bomber but revealed to the world a year later as a civil airliner.... In February 1937 operations began with the Legion Kondor in Spain, with considerable success.... To a considerable degree the success of the early elliptical winged HE 111 bombers in Spain misled the Luftwaffe into considering that nothing could withstand the onslaught of their huge fleets of medium bombers" (Gunston, p. 400).
"The use of the He 111 in Spain was to have a marked and, for Germany, unfortunate effect of the shaping of future German air strategy.... [The Heinkels] were fast enough to evade most of the fighter aircraft employed by the Republicans, and Kampfgruppe 88 evolved the technique of unescorted daylight attacks.... The comparatively light opposition encountered by the bomber squadrons inclined the German High Command to the belief that they could continue to operate fast medium bombers with but light fighter protection. In fact, they even believed that it would be possible for the fast medium bomber to lay waste any country without opposing fighter defences having an opportunity to interfere. It was also believed that the relatively light defensive armament of three 7.9 mm machine guns carried by the He 111 had proved to be adequate in view of the negligible losses suffered by the bombers over Spain. What serious misconceptions these beliefs were was to be revealed over Britain in 1940" (Green, p. 9).
By the time of the Battle of Britain, "the He 111 was hacked down with ease, its only defence being its toughness and ability to come back after being shot to pieces. The inevitable result was that more and more defensive guns were added, needing a fifth or even a sixth crew-member. Coupled with incessant growth in equipment and armour the result was deteriorating, so that the record-breaker of 1936-1938 was the sitting duck of 1942-1945" (Gunston, p. 401). (According to Green, p. 12, the crew by this time were pilot, bombardier, radio operator, and two or three gunners. This is in itself inefficient: who was navigating? The pilot? Couldn't the bombardier operate a gun? Crew are heavy, and to have one unemployed for most of the flight was a high burden.)
Despite this, the Germans were unable to replace the Heinkel; they never developed a better alternative or a successful four-engined bomber. "By the middle of the war the He 111 was obsolescent, but the lack of success of its potential replacements... necessitated keeping it in production well into 1944" (Munson, p. 95).
It is just barely possible that an Allied fighter would encounter a Heinkel at "Angels 23" (23,000 feet), but it's not very likely; the plane's service ceiling was 25,500 feet, but it could not fly above 16,400 when fully loaded (Gunston, p. 396; Green, p. 11, says the ceiling was 24,100 feet).
In the second verse, the flyer is flying at Angels 41 (41,000 feet) when a bunch of Messerschmitts come at him out of the sun. It's not clear what plane the singer is flying, but the opponent is presumably the Messerschmitt Bf-109, or just possibly the Messerschmitt Bf-110. But the altitude is a problem here. The Bf-110 had a service ceiling of 32,800 feet (Gunston, p. 224). Some Bf-109s could go higher than that (one reason they continued to be produced after the superior Focke-Wulf 190 came on the scene is that the FW 190 sometimes had trouble at high altitude), but the highest service ceiling listed on p. 218 is 41,000 feet, and only a tiny handful of Bf-109s could go that high; most had a ceiling of 38,500 or less. And to come at the pilot out of the sun probably means they came in at him from above
The Ju 88 of the last verse is the described by Hopkins as a twin-engined bomber, and it is true that it was designed as a medium bomber (Munson, p. 102). But "Parallel with the development of the Junkers Ju 88 as a medium bomber, the type was also being adapted to a variety of other roles, particularly those of night fighter, close support, and reconnaissance" (Munson, p. 103). So our pilot might have encountered the Ju 88 as a fighter. Once again the service ceiling is a little high; the song says the Ju 88 was at Angel 38 (38,000 feet), but the highest-flying Ju 88 reached only 36,000 feet, and most had ceiings below that (Gunston, p. 215).
For another song that is probably about the He 111, see "Heinkel, Come Back to Me." - RBW
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File: Hopk124

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