PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE XXIII: Gotthard Sachsenberg
Gotthard Sachsenberg was born on December 6, 1891 in Rosslau, north of the Elbe River near Dessau, Germany. After his initial schooling, he attended the gymnasium in Eisenach for secondary schooling preparatory to entering the university. His major was economics.
Sachsenberg volunteered for seagoing service and became a sea cadet on the cruiser SMS Hertha on the first of April 1913. The next year, he was promoted to Fähnrich zur See and soon transferred to the battleship SMS Pommern. He received the Iron Cross, First Class in August 1915 as an officer candidate, awarded for his excellence as an artillery spotter. On September 18, 1915, Sachsenberg received his commission as Leutnaut.
However, he was fascinated by aircraft and later that December, Sachsenberg transferred to the air service. He was posted to Marine Feldflieger Abteilung II as a Fähnrich zur See observer.
Sachsenberg then served as an instructor for observers. He underwent pilot training at Johannisthal and qualified as a pilot. Soon, he returned to MFA II to fly a Fokker Eindecker.
On February 1, 1917, Sachsenberg succeeded Oberleutnant von Santen as commanding officer of Marine Feld Jasta I. Marine Feld Jasta II was organized a bit later, and the two were combined into a larger unit, called Marine Jagdgruppe Flandern. Leutnant zur See Sachsenberg was appointed its commanding officer.
A third Jasta was later raised and added to the larger unit. Still later, two more MFJs were raised and added to the parent unit, bringing its strength up to about fifty fighter planes, comparable to an army Jagdgeschwader. Stationed on North Sea coastal airfields, the MFJ units often fought against Royal Naval Air Service aircraft who were stationed in similar circumstances.
Sachsenberg opened his score as a fighter pilot, downing a Farman and a Sopwith 1½ Strutter on May 1, 1917. He scored again eleven days later, claiming a Sopwith Pup into the sea, and then notching a double victory on June 7th to make him an ace.
On August 20, 1917, Sachsenberg was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern. By the end of the year, his victory roll stood at eight.
Sachsenberg claimed his ninth victory on March 17, 1918, and continued to score steadily until October 29, 1918, when his 31st kill was confirmed. Midway through this run, Sachsenberg was awarded Germany’s highest military decoration, the Pour le Mérite, on August 5, 1918.
The MJF switched from the Albatros to Fokker D.VIIs in June 1918. They were as colorful and distinctively marked as Manfred von Richthofen’s “Flying Circus” (Jagdgeschwader I). The basic color scheme was yellow and black, with a yellow and black checkerboard being Sachsenberg’s personal motif. It soon spread to the entire unit, with minor variations marking the different pilots.
After the war, Sachsenberg formed Kampfgeschwader Sachsenberg in January 1919, consisting of seven hundred personnel, several of whom were fellow war aces. Based at Riga and Latvia, it gave aerial support to the Freikorps, fighting Russian Communist forces on the Baltic borders of Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. It was successful in establishing air superiority over its opponent. It mainly flew ground support missions on behalf of the Freikorps. Sachsenberg received a promotion to Oberleutnant on March 5, 1920.
After the Baltic war ended, Sachsenberg initially concerned himself with helping his fellow veterans make the transition back to civil life. He joined with Professor Hugo Junkers, (whose aircraft he had used in the Baltic) and founded Aero Lloyd Airlines. Sachsenberg also concerned himself with the business of his brother’s shipyard, whuch saw the construction of river craft and small coastal ships.
Sachsenberg soon became interested in politics and was elected to the German Parliament. He represented Liegnitz from July 1932 onwards and took a pacifist stance.
He wrote and published articles decrying Germany’s military buildup toward war, and especially its establishment of the Luftwaffe. Sachsenberg predicted it would bring war home to the Fatherland. In retribution for his vocal “defeatism”, the Nazis held a secret trial in absentia, although Sachsenberg escaped the consequences of conviction, because the family shipyard was producing military ships.
In the mid-1930s, Sachsenberg allied himself with hydrofoil ship pioneer Hanns von Schertel. Hydrofoil ships with speeds of more than thirty knots (faster than any warships at the time) attracted the attention of the German Ministry of Transportation and Finance, the German Navy, and the German Air Force (Luftwaffe). Commercial exploitation of the hydrofoil was cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War. Several military hydrofoils of differing sizes, with speeds up to sixty knots, were acquired during the war. However, they were only prototypes, and most fell prey to damage of one sort or another. The end of World War II brought the Soviet occupation of Dessau and the acquisition of its shipyard.
Sachsenberg and Shertel set up a new hydrofoil operation named Supramar in Switzerland. In 1953, they finally saw the first commercial hydrofoil in operation between Ascona, Switzerland, and Arona, Italy on Lake Maggiore. The hydrofoil concept gradually spread to the rest of the world.
However, Gotthard Sachsenberg did not live to see its general use. He died in Bremen of a heart attack on August 23, 1961 at the age of sixty-nine.