Fritz Fliegel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fritz Fliegel Road cycling
Fritz Fliegel as Captain of the Wehrmacht (1941)
Fritz Fliegel as Captain of the Wehrmacht (1941)
To person
Date of birth November 30, 1907
date of death July 18, 1941
nation German EmpireGerman Empire German Empire
discipline Train (short term)
End of career 1929
Most important successes
German championships in track cycling
1929 German champions - sprint (amateurs)
Last updated: November 21, 2017

Fritz Fliegel (born November 30, 1907 in Wilmersdorf , today Berlin ; † July 18, 1941 over the North Atlantic ) was a German bomber pilot and former track cyclist .

biography

Cyclist

Fritz Fliegel was the son of the geologist Gotthard Fliegel , he had three sisters.

As a primary student , Fliegel, a friend of Walter Rütts son Oscar, won his first cycle race at the opening of the Rütt-Arena in Berlin in 1926. In 1929 he became German champion in the sprint of amateurs on the Stettin- Westend cycling track, which still exists today . In the same year he started at the World Railroad Championships in Zurich , where he was eliminated in the round of 16 against the Austrian August Schaffer. At the end of the year, Fliegel, a fourth semester law student, publicly announced his retirement from cycling in the magazine Illustrierter Radrenn-Sport in order to concentrate more on his studies from now on. He hopes to have passed his exams in two years so that he can go back to racing and compete in the Olympic Games .

Fighter aircraft

From 1931 Fliegel completed his training as an aircraft pilot and joined the Reichswehr in 1934 . In 1935 he joined the Air Force as a lieutenant and worked as a flight instructor, among others in Salzwedel and Brno . On March 1, 1939, he was promoted to captain .

After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in Poland , he flew attacks on the country and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class on September 15, 1939 . From May 1940 he flew missions with the Kampfgeschwader 40 , which was equipped with the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 . With his squadron he was initially used from Denmark to bomb enemy ships. In the summer of 1940 the squadron was moved to Bordeaux-Mérignac to fight enemy ships on the Atlantic . At the end of October 1940 he took over as squadron captain of the 2nd squadron, which sank 39 merchant ships and seriously damaged another 20 ships; Fliegel himself was involved with the sinking of seven and the damage of six ships. For the sinking of five steamers of the convoy HG 53 he was mentioned by name on February 10, 1941 as a squadron captain in the Wehrmacht report of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW).

On March 25, 1941, he was awarded the Knight's Cross, and this was followed by his appointment as group commander . A little later he was mentioned again in the Wehrmacht report. In the meantime, the number of sinkings by his squadron had increased to 109 merchant ships. The number of people who died in the bombing attacks involving Fliegel is unknown.

On July 18, 1941, Fritz Fliegel did not return from an enemy flight into the sea area northeast of Ireland. Together with his crew, he was considered missing. He was promoted to major posthumously .

literature

  • Jochen Kaiser: The knight's cross bearers of the fighter pilots . tape 1 . Luftfahrverlag Start, Bad Zwischenahn 2010, ISBN 978-3-941437-07-4 .

Web links

Commons : Fritz Fliegel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Captain Fliegel is none other than the German amateur champion of 1929”. Newspaper clipping v. February 12, 1941, oT Archive Fredy Budzinski, Central Library of Sports Science of the German Sport University Cologne. Stock No. 75.
  2. ^ Geological yearbook . Volume 69. Edited by the geological state institutes of the Federal Republic of Germany. Hanover 1955. S. XVII.
  3. ↑ a b Illustrated Radrenn-Sport , Berlin, November 24, 1929. P. 1323.
  4. ↑ Illustrierter Radrenn-Sport , Berlin, June 9, 1929. P. 621.
  5. ^ (Wiener) Sporttagblatt , August 14, 1929, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Chris Goss: Fw 200 Condor Units of World War 2. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2016, ISBN 978-1-4728-1269-8 , p. 91 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  7. ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Maritime War 1939–1945, February 1941 , accessed on December 16, 2017.
  8. ↑ a b Kaiser, Ritterkreuzträger , p. 154.
personal data
SURNAME Fliegel, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fighter pilot and cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmersdorf , Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1941
Place of death over the North Atlantic