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==Early life==
==Early life==
Hartmann was born in [[Weissach]] in [[Württemberg]]. Most of his childhood was spent in the [[Far East]], as his father was a [[physician|doctor]] working in [[China]]. Hartmann returned to Germany in [[1928]], and as many youths he joined the [[glider]] training programme of the fledgling Luftwaffe. His mother, Elizabeth, was one of the first female glider pilots, gaining her license from the Böblingen flying club. Erich was taught to fly by his mother. Soon the Hartmanns had bought a light-aircraft, but were forced to sell it in 1932 due to the changes in the German economy. After the [[Nazis]] came to power in 1933, gliding was encouraged. Elizabeth Hartmann help set up a flying school at Weil im Schönberg in 1936, by which time, at the age of 14 Erich had become an instructor<ref>Kaplan 2007, p. 89</ref>. He got his pilot's license in [[1939]], and started his education in ''Luftkriegsschule II'' in late [[1940]].
Hartmann was born in [[Weissach]] in [[Württemberg]]. Most of his childhood was spent in the [[Far East]]; his father was a [[physician|doctor]] working in [[China]]. Hartmann returned to Germany in [[1928]] and, like many youths, he joined the [[glider]] training programme of the fledgling Luftwaffe. His mother, Elizabeth, was one of the first female glider pilots, gaining her license from the Böblingen flying club. Erich was taught to fly by his mother. Soon the Hartmanns bought a light-aircraft, but were forced to sell it in 1932 due to the collapsing German economy. After the [[Nazis]] came to power in 1933 gliding was encouraged. Elizabeth Hartmann help set up a flying school at Weil im Schönberg in 1936, by which time, at the age of 14, Erich had become an instructor<ref>Kaplan 2007, p. 89</ref>. He got his pilot's license in [[1939]] and started his education in ''Luftkriegsschule II'' in late [[1940]].


==Career in the Luftwaffe==
==Career in the Luftwaffe==

Revision as of 17:39, 21 February 2008

Erich Hartmann
File:Erich Hartmann.jpg
Erich Hartmann
Nickname(s)Bubi, The blond Knight, or black Devil
AllegianceNazi Germany Nazi Germany (to 1945)
West Germany West Germany
Service/branchLuftwaffe
Years of service1941-1970
RankOberst (Colonel)
UnitJG 52, JG 53 and JG 71
Commands heldI./JG 52 and JG 71
Battles/warsWorld War II
AwardsRitterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwerten und Brillianten
Other workBundeswehr

Erich Alfred "Bubi" Hartmann (April 19, 1922 - September 20, 1993), also nicknamed " The Blond Knight Of Germany" by friends and "The Black Devil" by his enemies, is the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial combat. He scored 352 aerial victories (of which 345 were flown by the Soviet Air Force, and 260 of which were fighters) in 1,404 combat missions and engaging in aerial combat 825 times while serving with the Luftwaffe in World War II. Hartmann was forced to crash land his damaged fighter 14 times. This was due to damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had just shot down, or mechanical failure[1]. Hartmann was never shot down or forced to land due to enemy fire.

Early life

Hartmann was born in Weissach in Württemberg. Most of his childhood was spent in the Far East; his father was a doctor working in China. Hartmann returned to Germany in 1928 and, like many youths, he joined the glider training programme of the fledgling Luftwaffe. His mother, Elizabeth, was one of the first female glider pilots, gaining her license from the Böblingen flying club. Erich was taught to fly by his mother. Soon the Hartmanns bought a light-aircraft, but were forced to sell it in 1932 due to the collapsing German economy. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 gliding was encouraged. Elizabeth Hartmann help set up a flying school at Weil im Schönberg in 1936, by which time, at the age of 14, Erich had become an instructor[2]. He got his pilot's license in 1939 and started his education in Luftkriegsschule II in late 1940.

Career in the Luftwaffe

File:Erich hartmann front.jpg
Erich Hartmann

Hartmann got his 'wings' in 1941 and was assigned to the fighter wing Jagdgeschwader 52 in October 1942. JG 52 was stationed on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union and was equipped with the Messerschmitt Bf-109G.

JG 52 were based at Maykop, but Hartmann and several other pilots were to ferry several Junkers Ju 87 Stukas down to Mariupol, as there were not any replacement Bf 109s needed by JG 52. Hartmanns first flight in the Stuka ended in a crash due to brake failure. The Junkers went straight into the controllers hut, destroying it[3].

III./JG 52's commander, Gruppenkommandeur Major Hubertus von Bonin, placed Hartmann under the experienced Oberfeldwebel Alfred Grislawski. After a few days of intensive mock combats and practice flights, Grislawski admitted that although Hartmann had much to learn regarding combat tactics, he was a quite talented pilot.

Hartmann was assigned to the 7./JG 52[4] to serve as wingman to the Luftwaffe ace Walter Krupinski, who became his mentor and friend. He shot down his first Soviet plane on 5 November, 1942, an Il-2 from 7 GShAP. By the end of the year he had added only one more kill, and as with many top aces took some time to gradually establish himself as a consistently scoring fighter pilot.

On May 25 he shot down a LaGG-5 then collided with a second Soviet fighter while climbing into position for a second attack. Hartmann regained control of his damaged aircraft without crashing[5].

On July 7, 1943, he shot down seven planes in a single day during the massive air dogfights during the Battle of Kursk. He had reached 50 kills by August 1943, and in that month claimed another 48 kills. He was then appointed Staffelkapitän of 9./JG 52 in September 1943. By late August 1943 Hartmann had 90 claims, but on 19 August in combat with Il-2's his aircraft was damaged and he was forced to land behind Soviet lines. Hartmann was captured and loaded into a truck to be taken to the nearest Army HQ but, feigning illness, he managed to jump off the truck and elude his two Russian guards. Moving under cover of darkness he successfully walked west back to the German lines. In October 1943, he claimed another 33 kills, and Hartmann was awarded the Ritterkreuz on 29 October 1943, after 148 kills. At the end of the year his toll stood at 159.

In 1944, Hartmann continued scoring at an even greater pace. His spectacular rate of kills raised a few eyebrows even in the High Command of the Luftwaffe; his claims were double- and triple-checked, and his performance closely monitored by an observer flying in his formation. In March, he reached 202 kills. By this time the Soviet pilots were familiar with Hartmann's radio call-sign of 'Karaya One' and the Soviet Command had put a price on the German pilot's head. The Russians nicknamed Hartmann 'Cherniye Chort' or 'Black Devil' as for a while Hartmann had added a black 'tulip' design around the spinner of his aircraft, though once this was recognised as Hartmann's fighter by his opponents they were often reluctant to stay and fight. Therefore this aircraft was often allocated to novices to fly in relative safety. On 21 March Hartmann scored JG 52s 3,500th kill of the war[6].

In January - February 1944, Hartmann claimed 50 kills in 60 days. Throughout 1944, Hartmann claimed 172 victories, a total surpassed only by his friend Wilhelm Batz. On 21 May, he engaged American aircraft for the first time, downing two P-51 Mustangs over Bucharest, Romania, while two more P-51s fell victim to his fellow pilots[7]. On June 1, 1944 Hartmann shot down four Mustangs in a single mission over the Ploieşti oil fields.[8] Later that month during his fifth mission against the Americans he shot down two more Mustangs before being forced to bail out when other Mustangs ran his Messerschmitt out of fuel. During the intense manouvreing Hartmann managed to line-up on one of the Mustangs, he opened fire from close range only to hear a "clank" as he had run out of ammunition. [9][10]. On 17 August 1944 Hartmann became the top scoring fighter ace, surpassing fellow JG 52 pilot Gerhard Barkhorn with his 274th kill.

His 300th kill came on 24 August, 1944, a day he shot down 11 aircraft. After reaching 300 victories, he was grounded by Luftwaffe chief of staff Hermann Göring, who was fearful of the effect on German morale should such a hero be lost. Hartmann, however, successfully lobbied to be reinstated as a combat pilot. He had over 300 kills and became one of only 27 German soldiers in WWII to receive the diamonds to his Knight's Cross[11].

On 10 September 1944, Erich Hartmann married his long-time teenage love, Ursula "Usch" Paetsch. Witnesses to the wedding included his friends Major Gerhard Barkhorn and Hauptmann Wilhelm Batz [12].

In early 1945, Hartmann was asked by General Adolf Galland to join the Me-262 units forming to fly the new jet fighter. Hartmann declined the offer, preferring to remain with JG 52. Other sources report Hartmanns decision to stay with his unit was due to a request via telegram made by Oberstleutnant Hermann Graf[13]. At war's end he disobeyed an order from General Hans Seidemann. Seidemann had ordered him and Hermann Graf to fly to the British sector, to avoid capture by the Russians,
Erich said :[14]

I must say that during the war I never disobeyed an order, but when General Seidemann ordered Graf and I to fly to the British sector and surrender to avoid the Russians, with the rest of the wing to surrender to the Soviets. I could not leave my men. That would have been bad leadership

Erich chose not to leave the rest of his wing to surrender to the Soviets. Alternatively Hartmann (as Gruppenkommandeur or CO of I./JG 52) chose to surrender his unit to the 90th US Infantry Division. Hartmann's last kill occurred on 8 May 1945, over Brno, Czechoslovakia- the last day of the war in Europe.

Hartmann flew 1,404 missions resulting in 825 engagements[15], losing 14 aircraft from combat damage and forced landings. He was never wounded and never bailed out due to damage inflicted by enemy pilots. His kill tally included some 200 various single-engined Soviet-built fighters, more than 80 American-built P-39s, 15 Il-2 ground attack aircraft, and 10 twin-engined medium bombers. He often said that he was more proud of the fact that he had never lost a wingman in combat than he was about his rate of kills. However it appears Hartmann did lose one wingman. Major Günther Capito had joined the unit in the Spring of 1943. Capito was a former bomber pilot who had retrained on fighters. After scoring his fifth victory Capito asked to be Hartmanns wingman. Hartmann refused initially, believing Capito was insufficiently trained on Messerschmitts. On their first mission together they were enaged by P-39 Airacobras:

I called to him to turn hard opposite, so I could sandwhich the Red fighters, but in his standard-rate bomber turn he got hit. I saw the whole thing and ordered him to dive and bail out immediately. To my intense relief I saw him leave the aircraft and his parachute blossom. I was happy to get this Airacobra, but I was mad at myself for not harkening to my intuition not to fly with Günther Capito.[16]

Hartmann destroyed both the Soviet fighters soon afterwards.

Fighting technique

Hartmann flew a Messerschmitt Bf 109 Fighter

Unlike Hans-Joachim Marseille who was a marksman and expert in the art of deflection shooting, Hartmann was a master of stalk-and-ambush tactics. By his own account he was convinced that 80% of the pilots he downed didn't even realize what hit them. He relied on the powerful engine of his Messerschmitt Bf-109 for high-power sweeps and quick approaches, occasionally diving through entire enemy formations to take advantage of the confusion that followed in order to disengage. His favourite method of attack was to hold fire until extremely close (60ft/20m or less), then unleash a short burst at point-blank range. This technique he learned while flying as wingman of his former commander, Walter Krupinski, who favoured this approach. As opposed to long-range shooting, this technique allowed him to:

  • reveal his position only at the last possible moment
  • compensate for the low muzzle velocity of the slower firing 30 mm MK 108 cannon equipping some of the later Bf 109 models, though most of his victories were claimed with Messerschmitts equipped with the high velocity MG 151 cannon
  • place his shots accurately with minimum waste of ammunition
  • prevent the adversary from taking evasive actions

It also implied the risk of having to fly through the debris of a damaged or exploding aircraft, thereby damaging his own fighter in the process (much of the damage Hartmann sustained in combat was caused by collision with flying debris). If it was dangerous to dog-fight further he would break off and content himself with one victory. His careful approach was described by himself by the line "See - Decide - Attack - Break": observe the enemy, decide how to proceed with the attack, make the attack, and then disengage to re-evaluate the situation.

Hartmann once famously described dog-fighting as "a waste of time".

After the war

File:JG 71 Cuffband.jpg
Erich Hartmann receiving the Richthofen Cuffband from General Josef Kammhuber

After his capture the U.S. Army handed Hartmann, his pilots, and groundcrew over to the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned in accordance with the Yalta Agreements which stated that airmen and soldiers fighting the Russians had to surrender directly to them. Hartmann was falsely charged with war crimes (specifically, deliberate shooting of Russian civilians) and was subjected to harsh treatment during the early years of his imprisonment, including solitary confinement in total darkness. Hartmann, despite this, refused to confess to these charges, which were later dropped. More subtle efforts by the Soviet authorities to convert Hartmann to Communism also failed. He was also offered a post in the East German (DDR) Air Force which he refused. During his long imprisonment Hartmann's three-year-old son, whom he had never seen, died, though Hartmann later had a daughter in February 1957[17]. After spending ten and a half years in Soviet POW camps he was among the last batch of POWs to be released in 1955 and returned to West Germany, where he was reunited with his wife Ursula, to whom he had written every day of the war.

German F-86 Sabre in the Hartmann black tulip color scheme at the Luftwaffenmuseum.

When he returned to West Germany he became an officer in the West German Air Force, where he commanded West Germany's first all-jet unit, the Jagdgeschwader 71 "Richthofen", initially equipped with Canadair Sabre, followed later with U.S.-made Lockheed F-104 Starfighters. He also made several trips to the U.S., where he was trained on U.S. Air Force equipment. He had the JG 71 aircraft painted with the same spreading black tulip pattern used by 'Karaya One' on the Russian Front[18].

Hartmann considered the Lockheed F-104 a fundamentally flawed and unsafe aircraft and strongly opposed its adoption by the West German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe). Although events subsequently validated his low opinion of the aircraft (282 crashes and 115 German pilots killed on the F-104 in non-combat missions; allegations of bribes culminating in the Lockheed scandal), his outspoken criticism proved unpopular with his superiors. Statements like "Erich is a good pilot but not a good officer" made by General Werner Panitzki, successor to General Josef Kammhuber as Inspekteur der Luftwaffe, forced Hartmann into early retirement in 1970[19].

From 1971 to 1974 he worked as flight instructor in Hangelar near Bonn.

Erich Hartmann died on September 20, 1993, at age 71 in Weil im Schönbuch [1]. Russia exonerated Erich Hartmann in January 1997 by admitting that his conviction was unlawful.

Awards

File:RK EK mit ol sw di.png
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oakleaves, Swords, and Diamonds, awarded to Hartmann after his 300th victory.

References

Notes
  1. ^ Toliver & Constable 1986, p. 12.
  2. ^ Kaplan 2007, p. 89
  3. ^ Toliver & Constable 1986, p. 32-33
  4. ^ For an explanation of the meaning of Luftwaffe unit designation see Luftwaffe Organization
  5. ^ Kurowski 1996, p. 177
  6. ^ Weal, p74
  7. ^ P. Kaplan, p. 115
  8. ^ Toliver and Constable 1985, p.177-182, 339 Template:De icon
  9. ^ Kaplan 2007, p.115.
  10. ^ Toliver and Constable 1986, p.165-169 Template:En icon
  11. ^ Weal, p71
  12. ^ Hartman and Jäger 1992, p. 139-145.
  13. ^ Weal, p82
  14. ^ - interview by Colin Heaton
  15. ^ Toliver and Constable 1985, p.340 Template:De icon
  16. ^ Kaplan 2007, p. 100.
  17. ^ P. Kaplan, 125
  18. ^ Toliver and Constable 1985, p. 278 Template:De icon
  19. ^ Toliver and Constable 1985, p. 285, 286 Template:De icon
Bibliography
  • Berger, Florian, Mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern. Die höchstdekorierten Soldaten des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Selbstverlag Florian Berger, 2006. ISBN 3-9501307-0-5.
  • Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939-1945. Friedburg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas, 2000. ISBN 3-7909-0284-5.
  • Hartmann, Ursula and Jäger, Manfred. German Fighter Ace Erich Hartmann. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1992. ISBN 0-88740-396-4.
  • Jackson, Robert. Fighter Aces of World War II. Corgi Books, 1978.
  • Kaplan, Philip. Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe in World War WWII (Pen & Sword Aviation). Auldgirth, Dumfriesshire, 2007. ISBN 184415460-2.
  • Kurowski, Franz. Luftwaffe Aces. J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing Inc, 1996. ISBN 0-921991-31-2.
  • Patzwall, Klaus D. and Scherzer, Veit. Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 - 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II. Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, 2001. ISBN 3-931533-45-X.
  • Sims, Edward H. Jagdflieger Die Grossen Gegner von Einst. Stuttgart, Germany: Motorbuch Verlag, 1982. ISBN 3-87943-115-9.
  • Toliver, Raymond F. and Constable, Trevor J. Holt Hartmann vom Himmel!. Stuttgart, Germany: Motorbuch Verlag, 1985. ISBN 3-87943-216-3.
  • Toliver, Raymond F. and Constable, Trevor J. The Blond Knight of Germany. McGraw-Hill, 1986. ISBN 0-8306-8189-2.
  • Weal, John (2003a). Bf109 Aces of the Russian Front. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 1-84176-084-6

See also

External links

Military offices
Preceded by
none
 Commander of Jagdgeschwader 71 Richthofen
January 19, 1959-May 29, 1962 		Succeeded by

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