Bruno Loerzer

Fighter pilot Bruno Loerzer in 1918 with the Pour le Mérite

Bruno Loerzer (center) with other pilots (1934)

Bruno Loerzer (born January 22, 1891 in Berlin , † August 22, 1960 in Hamburg ) was a fighter pilot in World War I and Colonel General of the German Air Force in World War II .

Life

Loerzer joined the Prussian army on September 13, 1911 and was trained as a pilot during the First World War. Until mid-1915 he was initially employed as a reconnaissance officer together with Hermann Göring . Until January 1917 he was used in three different squadrons. During this time he scored the first two aerial victories over French pilots. After his 20th kill in October 1917 and the award of the Pour le Mérite in February 1918, he was appointed commander of the newly formed Fighter Wing III. His brother Fritz (1893–1952) was one of the most successful pilots under his command with 11 victories .

Göring and Loerzer (left)

As leader of the Jasta 26 and three other hunting squadrons, he was very successful. His  units, equipped with the technically high-quality Fokker D.VII - one of the best aircraft of the First World War - inflicted heavy losses on the Allies and were therefore particularly feared. Loerzer himself scored 44 kills throughout the war, making him one of the most successful German fighter pilots.

After 1918 fought Loerzer in various volunteer corps in the Baltic States , before 31 March 1920 as captain of the Reichswehr was dismissed. He then worked as a pilot for Sablatnig -lugzeugbau GmbH until his dismissal in 1923 . He temporarily left the aviation industry and worked for the cigar factory of his old war comrade Jacob Wolff . From 1925 he was head of the Reich Association of German Aircraft Owners, a civil pilots' association.

In 1925 he won the Germany flight in Group A with a Klemm-Daimler L 21 .

Under the National Socialists , his career benefited above all from his friendship with Hermann Göring. In 1933 he was first president of a military front organization, the German Air Sports Association and Reich Air Sports Leader, before he was reactivated as a colonel in 1935 - with the official establishment of the Air Force, which was previously banned by the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty - and in 1937 he was appointed commodore of a fighter squadron. From 1938 he became inspector of the fighter pilots.

At the beginning of the war Loerzer was major general and commander of the 2nd Air Division. In October 1939 he was appointed commanding general of the II. Fliegerkorps, he was promoted to general lieutenant on January 1, 1940 and promoted to general of the fliers on July 19 of the same year . In February 1943 he was then appointed by Göring and promoted to Colonel-General as Chief of the Air Force Personnel Office and Personnel Armaments, a position whose duties Loerzer was far overwhelmed by. On December 20, 1944, he was therefore relieved of his command, transferred to the Führerreserve and finally released on April 29, 1945.

Loerzer died in 1960 of a heart attack and was buried in the Hamburg-Nienstedten cemetery.

Awards

• Honor goblet for the winner in the dogfight
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Royal House Order of Hohenzollern Knight's Cross with Swords
• Pour le Mérite on February 12, 1918
• Order of the Zähringer Löwen Knight's Cross 2nd class with swords on April 27, 1915
• Military Karl Friedrich Order of Merit Knight's Cross on August 8, 1918
• Wehrmacht service award IV. And III. class
• Medal in memory of October 1, 1938 with Prague Castle clasp
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on May 29, 1940

See also

• List of German fighter pilots in the First World War

literature

• Bruno Loerzer , in Internationales Biographisches Archiv 40/1960 of September 26, 1960, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite . Part 2: The Knights of the Order pour le mérite of the First World War . Volume 2: H - O . Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 3-7648-2516-2 .
• Arch Whitehouse: Aviator Aces 1914-1918 . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 407-409.

Web links

Commons : Bruno Loerzer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography - project "Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries"
• Newspaper article about Bruno Loerzer in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bruno Loerzer - Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . In: Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries . March 9, 2018 ( ns-reichsministerien.de [accessed March 29, 2018]).
2. ↑ Ernst Schäffer: Pour Le Merite-Flieger im Feuer . Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 1931, p. 128 .
3. ↑ Karlheinz Kenns: Historical German aircraft until 1945 . Pp. 36-41.
4. ↑ His adjutant was Rudolf Bieber .