In a G-load disaster from the rate of climb Sometimes I'd faint and be lost to our side But there's no reward for failure, but death So watch me in mirrors, keep me on the glidepath
Get me through these fighters, no, I cannot fail While my great silver slugs are eager to feed I can't fail - No, not now ! When twenty-five bombers wait ripe
They hang there dependent from the sky Like some heavy metal fruit These bombers are ripe and ready to tilt (? trans.) Must these Englishmen live that I might die? Must they live that I might die?
M-E two-sixty-two prince of turbojets Junkers Jumo 004 Blasts from clustered R4M quartets in my snout And see these English planes go burn !
Will you be my witness, how red were the skies? When the Fortresses flew for the very last time It was dark over Westphalia In April of '45...
Translation of a drinking song popular in the mess hall of Jagdverband 44, the elite squadron of Luftwaffe experten hand-picked by Adolf Galland and based at Brandenburg-Briest. The lyrics are attributed to one of the squadron's line chiefs, Oberwerkmeister Erick Bloom. from Appendix X in Luft '46: Endgame Over Fortress Europe by William Green