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Incredible story about World War II enemy pilots...

ArmyDeac posted that on FB from the 'stan yesterday. Its such a great read, and one of the better CNN stories I've read in some time.
 
Within the span of a week, I spoke to two widows who's husbands had just passed. One was a former Nazi soldier who left Germany right after the war while the other was very high up in the Secret Polish Army. I wondered if their paths ever crossed in any way on the battlefield but have no way of knowing for sure.
 
one of the most incredible things about this story is the fact that only 1200 Luftwaffe pilots survived the war
 
Yeah, that statistic stuck out to me as well. I knew that the survival rate for U-Boat crewmen was very low, but I didn't realize that the survival rate for Luftwaffe pilots was so low as well.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
one of the most incredible things about this story is the fact that only 1200 Luftwaffe pilots survived the war
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The eastern front was a vile, vile war. There's never enough statistics to hammer that home - just an incredible and utter waste of millions upon millions of lives.
 
The Luftwaffe never had the luxury of being able to rotate pilots away from the front. You basically kept flying until you were killed or captured. That's why if you look at the top aces in history the top 100 is pretty much all German pilots from WWII with a few Japanese and Soviet pilots scattered in there. The US would routinely take its top pilots away from the front to train new recruits back home.
 
Now this is a thread that is heartbreaking yet very uplifting.
 
PalmettoDeac19 said:
The Luftwaffe never had the luxury of being able to rotate pilots away from the front. You basically kept flying until you were killed or captured. That's why if you look at the top aces in history the top 100 is pretty much all German pilots from WWII with a few Japanese and Soviet pilots scattered in there. The US would routinely take its top pilots away from the front to train new recruits back home.
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Indeed. The victory tallies of the top Luftwaffe aces are truly astounding. The top 3 are Erich Hartmann with 352 victories (almost all against Soviet aircraft, although he did shoot down a few P-51s at the end of the war). Gerhard Barkhorn had 301 victories, while Gunther Rall tallied 275. There were dozens of Luftwaffe pilots with over 100 victories.

Some of our top aces were Richard Bong with 40, David McCampbell with 34, Francis Gabreski and Gregory "Pappy" Boyington with 28 each, and George Preddy (from Greensboro) with 26.

Edited to add: Hans Ulrich-Rudel, a Luftwaffe Stuka ground attack pilot, destroyed (according to Wikipedia) over 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, 70 landing craft, nine aircraft, 4 armored trains, several bridges, a destroyer, two cruisers, and the Soviet battleship Marat. He apparently was the most highly decorated pilot/Soldier in the Third Reich and an unrepentant Nazi ideologue.

Harvey Barracks, the Kaserne where I was stationed at in Kitzingen, Germany, was formerly a Luftwaffe air base and was where Rudel flew in (fleeing from the Russians) to surrender to the Americans.
 
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19deac92 said:
Edited to add: Hans Ulrich-Rudel, a Luftwaffe Stuka ground attack pilot, destroyed (according to Wikipedia) over 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, 70 landing craft, nine aircraft, 4 armored trains, several bridges, a destroyer, two cruisers, and the Soviet battleship Marat. He apparently was the most highly decorated pilot/Soldier in the Third Reich and an unrepentant Nazi ideologue.

Harvey Barracks, the Kaserne where I was stationed at in Kitzingen, Germany, was formerly a Luftwaffe air base and was where Rudel flew in (fleeing from the Russians) to surrender to the Americans.
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Yeah, Rudel was a terrific pilot - he flew an absurd number of missions (2,500+) and was shot down numerous times only to keep making it back and flying again.

Too bad he was a horrible human being and a virulent Nazi until his death. He was involved in a huge political and military scandal in West Germany in the late 70s, partly over this. Most of the German soldiers in WW2 were just people caught up in history and trying to make the best of their lives. Rudel was one of the few that were horrible people to their core.
 
amazing story, thanks for sharing.
 
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