Georg-Peter Eder

From The Air Combat Wiki

Most successful German bomber-killer.

Georg-Peter “Schorsch” Eder was born on 8 March 1921 at Oberdachstetten, Germany. In October 1938 he joined the Luftwaffe. At the beginning of April 1939 he enrolled in the aviation academy at Berlin-Gatow. A year later he sat a pilot examination and was sent to aviation school at Werneuchen.

Eder flew his first combat mission with 1./JG 51 on 1 September 1940. He flew throughout the Battle of Britain but did not score a victory. In May 1941 he joined 4./JG 51 and shot down his first aircraft, a RAF Spitfire fighter, on 7 May.

Eder marked his participation in the commencement of the campaign on the Eastern Front by destroying two Russian aircraft on 22 June 1941. On 24 July 1941, he was shot down and wounded. On 22 August, Eder collided with a Ju 52 transport aircraft on the ground at Ponjatowska in his Bf 109 F-2. He suffered a fracture at the base of the skull and was forced into hospital. He had recorded 10 victories at this time.

On recovery from his injuries, Eder was sent as a flight instructor to Jagdfliegerschule 2 based at Zerbst arriving there on 1 November 1941.

A year later, Eder was transferred to 7./JG 2 based in France. With this unit he participated in the growing battle against the American four-engined heavy bombers. With Hauptmann Egon Mayer (102 victories, of which 25 were four-engined bombers), also of III./JG 2, Eder developed the strategies to combat the formations of four-engined B-17s and B-24s. Particularly noteworthy was the development of the head-on attack in order to take advantage of the relatively weak defensive fire from that sector of the bombers.

In February 1943 Eder was appointed Staffelkapitän of 12./JG 2. On 28 March he downed a B-17, however, his engine was hit and he was wounded when his Bf 109 G-4 somersaulted upon landing at Beaumont. Eder continued to score steadily, destroying his 20th enemy aircraft on 29 May 1943. After shooting down a P-47 and a B-17 on 30 July his victory total reached 31 victories. On 5 September 1943, Eder was transferred as Staffelkapitän of 5./JG 2. He continued to fight against the formations of four-engined bombers and had continued success against these aircraft. On 5 November, Eder was again forced to bail out of his Bf 109 G-6 and was again injured.

In March 1944 Oberleutnant Eder was transferred to 6./JG 1. He baled out of his Fw 190 A-7 following aerial combat with an USAAF P-47 fighter near Göttingen on 19 April. On 8 May, he downed a B-24 but he was also hit and had to make an emergency landing in his Fw 190 A-8 at Vechta. On 29 May, after shooting down a B-17, he collided with his Fw 190 A-8 with a Siebel airplane during the landing at Cottbus but Eder escaped unhurt. By the end of the month of May he had a total of 49 confirmed victories. As the Kommandeur of II./JG1 he fought in the aerial battles over Normandy after the Allied invasion. On 21 June 1944 he recorded his 50th victory and on 24 June received the Knight's Cross.

On 11 August 1944 Eder took command of 6./JG 26. In an attack on allied armour near Dreux on 17 August Eder shot down a Spitfire from very low altitude; it crashed between two M-4 Sherman tanks, destroying them both. Shortly after he shot down a second Spitfire, which crashed on a third tank, setting it on fire. Eder was therefore also credited with three destroyed tanks. On 4 September Hauptmann Eder became Gruppenkommandeur of II./JG 26, the day after the unit's previous Kommandeur Hauptmann Emil Lang (173 victories) was killed in action against USAAF Thunderbolts over St Trond, Belgium.

In September Hauptmann Eder was transfered to Erprobungskommando 262 (later Kommando Nowotny) where he was appointed Staffelkapitän of 1./Kdo Nowotny. On 19 November, following the transfer of Kommando Nowotny to JG 7, he commanded 9./JG 7, flying the Me 262 jet fighter in combat with considerable success. During the Ardennes offensive, Eder was to prove his efficacy with the Me 262 in the ground-attack role claiming 40 P-47s destroyed on the ground. He was awarded the Oak Leaves on the 25 November 1944 for 60 victories. On 22 January he was shot down near Parchim by USAAF P-51s and P-38s while preparing to land. He broke both his legs and spent the rest of the war in hospital at Wismar and, later, Bad Weissee where he was captured by US Army troops.

Altogether Eder flew 572 combat missions of which 150 were with the Me 262. On the Eastern Front he scored 10 victories and on the Western Front 68, of which no less than 36 were four-engined bombers. With the Me 262 he scored probably 24 victories (most of them couldn`t be officially confirmed). He was the leading scorer against the four-engined bombers, although Eder himself was shot down 17 times, baling out 9 times, and wounded 14 times.

Georg-Peter Eder died on 11 March 1986 in Wiesbaden.