ERICH HARTMANN
TOP SCORING FIGHTER ACE OF ALL TIME
At the age of eighteen, Erich Hartmann joined the German Luftwaffe in nineteen forty. After completing his pilot training in October nineteen forty two, he was assigned to the elite JG 52 fighter wing, based in the Caucasus region of southern Russia.
Hartmann's first aircraft assingment was in the dreaded Messerschmitt Bf 109G. Harmann then scored his first air combat victory on November fifth and in the next few months until the end of the year, he would score eighteen more victories.
From January nineteen forty three until July, JG 52 was tasked with covering the long Wehrmacht retreat after the German disaster at Stalingrad, fighting in hundreds of defensive actions in the region, where Hartmann scored seventeen airiel victories.
On August third nineteen forty three during the battle of Kursk which involved nearly four thousand aircraft on both sides. Erich Hartmann achieved his fiftieth airiel victory over a Russian Lagg three fighter.
On August thirty first after shooting down two enemy aircraft, his Messerschmitt was damaged by debris and he was forced to land behind Soviet lines. Hartmann was then captured by a Soviet patrol but faked internal injuries and was placed on a truck for medevac, where during transport he leapt off and escaped back to German lines.
After the German defeat at Kursk, JG 52 was transferred to southern Ukraine, where on September twentieth nineteen forty three, Hartmann scored his one hundredth air combat victory and was promoted to Captain at age twenty one.
In the month of October, captain Hartmann would go on to score an astounding fifty kills and was awarded the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross, by the commander of JG 52, Major Hubertus von Bonin.
In February nineteen forty four, Hartmann scored his two hundredth aerial victory. In response, the Soviet high command placed a bounty of fifty thousand rubles on his head. In March Hartmann was summoned to the Berchtesgaden and personally awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knights Cross by Hitler.
In May, JG 52 was transferred to Romania to protect the Ploesti oilfieds were on June twenty fourth, Hartmann shot down two American P51 Mustangs in his very first encouter with the best fighter plane the allies possessed.
In August, JG 52 was transferred to Poland to face the russians once again were on the seventeenth, Captain Erich Hartmann became the top scoring fighter ace of all time after scoring his two hundredth and seventy fourth air combat victory.
Hartmann would achieve his three hundred and first airial victory when on August twenty fourth, he shot down an incredible eleven enemy aircraft in a single day. He was promoted to Major and then summoned to the wolfs lair to once again be personally awarded the diamond swords to his Knights Cross with oak leaves by Hitler.
In December, Hartmann was encouraged to join the Luftwaffe's elite JV 44 squadron which were flying the new Me 262 jet fighter under the command of Lufwaffe General Adolf Galland, but declined.
On the last day of the war, May eighth nineteen forty five, Hartmann scored his final victory over the skies of Brno Czechoslovakia, a Russian Yak eleven, bringing his war total to three hundred and fifty two confirmed kills.
Major Hartmann would land and be informed that Germany had officially surrendered and that the war was over. He then ordered his squadron to surrender to the Anglo Allies, but they were handed over to the Soviets on May fourteenth.
On December twenty seventh nineteen forty five, Erich Hartmann was spared execution and sentenced to twenty years hard labour as a war criminal and placed in the Soviet gulag system, however after ten years imprisonment he was released.
In nineteen fifty five, Hartmann was approached by the ministry of defense to rejoin the newly formed West German air force, he was reinstated the following year with the rank of colonel and given command of the seventy first fighter wing, equipt with the American F86 Sabre.
In July nineteen sixty, the West German government replaced there ageing sabre squadrons with the new American Lockheed F 104 Starfighter, of which Hartmann steadfastly described as a death trap, for his vocal opinions he was forcibly retired from the air force.
Colonel Erich Hartmann would later die on September twentieth nineteen ninety three aged seventy two and is buried with his wife Ursula at the cemetery in Weilim Schonbuch, Germany.
ERICH HARTMAN
YOUTUBE