THE LAST DIVE: The Sonderkommando Elbe, a Falling B-17, and a Miracle Landing

On April 7th, 1945—just weeks before the war in Europe ended—the skies over Germany hosted one of the strangest and most dramatic duels of the air war. A wounded teenager in a failing Messerschmitt was spiraling toward death. A damaged B-17 with no functional flight controls was tumbling out of formation. And somehow, through chaos, fire, and an impossible sequence of events, both airmen would survive—and cross paths again nearly sixty years later.

This is the story of Klaus Hahn, a 17-year-old volunteer of the Sonderkommando Elbe, and Captain Bud Wentz of the 401st Bomb Group. One fell with a useless arm and no aircraft beneath him. One piloted a crippled bomber using nothing but engine power. And both walked away from a day no one was meant to survive.

A Mission Built on Desperation

The Sonderkommando Elbe was one of the final gambles of a collapsing air force. Its purpose was extraordinary and tragic: a small group of pilots would attempt to bring down heavy Allied bombers without using guns. Their weapon was their aircraft. Their method was ramming.

The hope was that by inflicting sudden, shocking losses on the bomber streams, Germany might buy time—time to rebuild, time to deploy more advanced jet fighters, time to breathe. The reality was harsher: barely 150 young men, many with minimal training, were sent to face thousands of Allied aircraft.

Among them was Klaus Hahn.
He volunteered after witnessing devastating air raids on his hometown—destruction that left him determined to “do something” in return. He was told he was not expected to die, that he could attempt to escape his aircraft after the strike. In theory, he would clip a bomber’s stabilizer or rudder and bail out immediately.

In practice, no one truly believed survival was likely.

Alone Against the Mustangs

On the morning of April 7th, Hahn took off in a worn Bf 109 assigned to the mission. His squadron scattered shortly after takeoff. Some turned back. Some became lost. Some were intercepted immediately.

Hahn pressed on alone.

Soon, a formation of P-51 Mustangs spotted him. They dove past in a flash of silver, then banked hard and curled back to attack. Hahn tried to maneuver, but his aircraft was slow—mysteriously so. The throttle felt lifeless. Worse, his ammunition load was tiny. The Sonderkommando aircraft had been stripped down: minimal fuel, minimal guns, often questionable airworthiness.

The Mustangs swept in again, their .50 caliber guns hammering the 109. Metal sheared away. The canopy sparked. The wings shredded. A final burst ripped into the cockpit, striking Hahn in the upper arm. He didn’t realize what had happened until he tried to adjust the throttle—and saw his arm hanging motionless at his side.

He had no weapons.
No speed.
No maneuverability.
One functioning arm.

There was only one choice left: bail out.

He rolled the crippled fighter onto its back, preparing to fall free—but the limp arm snagged against the canopy. He tried again. The 109 pitched downward, gaining speed as gravity tightened its grip.

And then the clouds parted—and he saw them.

A full B-17 formation directly beneath him.

A Final Decision

The sight electrified him. Pain vanished beneath a surge of focus and fury. He retook the controls with his good hand and steadied the 109 into a dive.

Below, in the center of the formation, flew the B-17 “Bette,” commanded by Captain Bud Wentz.

Hahn aimed his aircraft like a spear.

The impact struck the B-17’s tail section. The ball turret vanished in an explosion of debris. The stabilizer tore away. The tail gunner was thrown forward into the fuselage. The entire bomber shuddered violently.

Inside the cockpit, Wentz shouted for a damage report.

“Massive hole in the tail! Turret is gone!”

“How are we going to land this thing?”

That question would define the next hour.

Freefall

For Hahn, the hit was the last thing he remembered. He woke moments later in open sky, falling fast, no aircraft beneath him. The wind roared in his ears. The ground raced toward him through thinning clouds.

He forced himself to wait—falling until the oxygen returned to his lungs, until he was low enough for the chute to open properly.

At roughly 3,000 feet, he pulled the cord.

The parachute blossomed.
Pain tore through his injured arm.
The shock overwhelmed him, and he blacked out.

A Bomber With No Controls

Meanwhile, high above, Bud Wentz was discovering a terrifying truth: the collision had severed all control linkages to the rudder and elevators.

The B-17 could no longer turn using its flight surfaces.
It could no longer pitch up or down.
It could barely remain level.

The only remaining tools were:

Throttle differential

Prayer

Nerves of steel

Wentz used engine power to “twist” the bomber by running one side hotter than the other, creating crude, asymmetric thrust. It allowed him to pull slightly left or right—but every adjustment risked overstressing the already-damaged tail.

Staying in formation was impossible. Remaining in formation would be suicidal.

He called out:
“Red Leader, Red Leader, this is Red Four. Took heavy damage. Leaving the box.”

And then came the harder part: avoiding the other bombers while nearly incapable of maneuvering.

At one point a B-17 drifted toward them through turbulence—so close that Wentz’s copilot shouted:

“Pull up, pull up!”

“I can’t! I don’t have an elevator!”

Inch by inch, throttle by throttle, Wentz guided the wounded bomber away from danger.

Now they had to find a place to land.

A Runway in Enemy Territory

As the crippled B-17 limped deeper into Germany, the crew scanned desperately for a landing site. Then a strip of concrete appeared beneath them—a runway. No markings. No activity.

“Is that ours?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do we have another choice?”
“No.”

Wentz committed.

At low altitude, still with no functioning control surfaces, he delayed lowering the landing gear until the last possible second. Any earlier, and the destabilization could have rolled the bomber into the ground.

At the perfect moment, he dropped the gear, cut power, and held the descent steady with throttle alone.

The wheels struck asphalt. Hard.
The aircraft bounced.
Settled.
And rolled to a stop.

Silence filled the cockpit.

They had landed a B-17 with no rudder and no elevator.

Not a single crewman was lost.

The Abandoned Airfield

The airfield seemed deserted—until a lone American infantryman stepped from a building.

“You aren’t supposed to land here!”

Wentz gestured to the shredded tail.
“I didn’t have a choice.”

The soldier gave them astonishing news: the airfield had only recently fallen into Allied hands. The front was moving so fast that even the troops on the ground weren’t sure what territory they held hour by hour.

Then came the second surprise.

In a hangar sat a fully intact B-17—one captured by a special German unit, KG 200, which used Allied aircraft for covert operations. It had been left behind during their evacuation.

It was fueled.
Functional.
Barely touched.

And now it was theirs.

The crew inspected it carefully. Everything worked. Wentz climbed into the cockpit and prepared for their second takeoff of the day.

As they taxied out, the waist gunner appeared holding a jagged piece of the Bf 109’s wing:

“A souvenir!”

The engines roared, and the crew lifted into the sky—flying home in a bomber that, hours earlier, had belonged to the enemy.

Aftermath and Reunion

Back in England, mechanics and officers stared at the aircraft in disbelief. They had never seen a landing like it. They likely never would again.

When asked what happened to their original bomber, Wentz shrugged:

“That one is down in Germany somewhere.”

As for Klaus Hahn, he survived his fall but lost his injured arm. He recovered in a hospital as the war collapsed around him. He carried for decades the quiet fear that he had killed an American crew that day.

Fifty-eight years later, an author connected the two men. Hahn learned—through tears—that the crew he’d struck had lived. Wentz learned—astonished—that the collision had been intentional.

The two men exchanged letters.
Both found a measure of peace.

The Sonderkommando Elbe never slowed the Allied bombing campaign. Most of its aircraft never reached their targets. Allied intelligence did not even realize a coordinated ramming operation had been attempted until after the war.

But on April 7th, 1945, two young airmen on opposite sides collided in a moment that should have claimed them all—and instead produced one of the war’s most extraordinary survival stories.

Wentz returned home to marry his sweetheart.
Hahn returned home changed forever.
And somewhere in the Ruhr Valley, pieces of two aircraft still lie where destiny first introduced them.