Horst Rudat

Horst Rudat (born May 3, 1920 in Wirtkallen, Insterburg district , † August 31, 1982 in Laaber ) was an officer and pilot in the air force of the Wehrmacht and later in the air force of the German armed forces . He retired as major general .

Life

In 1920 he was born the son of a farmer in Wirtkallen (renamed Wirtberg in 1938, from 1945 Russian as Polikarpowo) in the Insterburg district in East Prussia and had six siblings. Around 200 people lived in the small town at the time. From 1926 to 1930 he attended the village school in neighboring Groß Laschnicken and then the high school in Insterburg and graduated from high school in 1938.

Wehrmacht

On November 1, 1938, he joined the Air Force as an officer candidate and was a member of the Fliegerausbildungregiment 16 in Schleswig. After training as a fighter pilot from 1939/40 in the Luftkriegsschule 5 (LKS 5) in Regensburg - Obertraubling , he became a lieutenant in the 10th Squadron of Kampfgeschwader 55 (10./KG 55) on the Eastern Front during World War II on June 8, 1941 offset. In July 1941 he moved to the 3rd season, which he belonged to until the end of 1942. On April 1, 1942, he was promoted to first lieutenant. On February 1, 1943 he took over the 2nd squadron as squadron captain . A little later, on May 1, 1943, he took over the 2nd squadron of Lehrgeschwader 1 as squadron captain . On May 27, 1942 he received the Cup of Honor for Special Achievement in the Air War and a month later, on July 27, 1942, the German Cross in Gold and on March 24, 1943, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . On June 1, 1943, he was promoted to captain. From January to June 14, 1944 he was the squadron captain of the combat squadron 101 and then the 2nd squadron of Kampfgeschwader 55.

After the Allies landed in Normandy as part of Operation Overlord , Rudat was tasked with attacking the invasion fleet with the 2nd Squadron of Kampfgeschwader 55 from Saint-Dizier . On the night of June 24th to 25th, 1944, an attack with three other so-called “ mistletoe teams ”, a combination of a Junkers Ju 88 and an explosive-filled hull of a bomber, landed at Gold Beach near the mouth of the Seine in Normandy and damaged the starboard side of the British frigate HMS Nith (K215), in which nine sailors were killed and 26 wounded.

On November 15, 1944, he took over as captain in Group II of Kampfgeschwader 200 . During the Second World War he made 337 enemy flights.

armed forces

After the Second World War he worked in Regensburg as an interpreter for the US armed forces in Germany . On May 26, 1953 he is a founding member of the Motorfluggruppe Regensburg eV and on May 28, 1957 he received the pilot's license for glider pilots with aircraft towing authorization.

After the establishment of the Bundeswehr in 1955, Rudat was taken over as a captain in the Air Force from 1956 . In 1960 he took a six-month course in the United States and was promoted to major. In 1962 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. From February 1, 1964 to March 31, 1971, Rudat was the second commodore of Lufttransportgeschwader 63 in Celle and Hohn . In 1965 he was promoted to colonel and on September 1, 1967, he landed as a squadron commodore with the first transport aircraft of the North Noratlas type in the Federal Republic of Germany at the airfield in Hohn. In October 1968 he took part in the participation of Lufttransportgeschwader 63 with a Transall C-160 at the Tokyo Air Show. In July 1969 he completed the first Atlantic crossing with a Transall C-160 from Hohn via Keflavik, Sondreström, Gander to Washington DC, together with Captain Schlüter, the navigator Sergeant Amann and Hauptfeldwebel Teichert. From 1970 he was an advisor at the Federal Ministry of Defense and responsible for flight safety. In 1974 he became a brigadier general and from January 1, 1975 to mid-1977 was chief of an air force staff in Denmark . In his last assignment as major general and from July 1, 1977 as commander of the air transport command in Münster , which was entrusted with the operational management of all three air transport squadrons, the helicopter transport squadron and the flight readiness BMVg , he retired on September 30, 1980 and last lived in Waldetzenberg . Before that, he received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 1978 .

Awards

• Iron Cross
  • 2nd class on August 9, 1941
  • 1st class on September 7, 1941
• Luftwaffe Honor Cup on May 27, 1942
• German cross in gold on July 27, 1942
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on March 24, 1943
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class 1978

literature

• Roger Ford: Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II . Ed .: Chris Marshall. Zenith Imprint, 2000, ISBN 0-7603-0847-0 .
• Robert Forsyth: Mistel - German Composite Aircraft and Operations 1942-1945 . Classic Publications Limited, 2001, ISBN 1-903223-09-1 .
• Jochen Kaiser: The knight's cross bearers of the fighter pilots . Ed .: Axel Urbanke. 1st edition. tape 2 . Luftfahrtverlag Start, Bad Zwischenahn 2011, ISBN 978-3-941437-09-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Henry L. deZeng IV, Douglas G. Stankey: Air Force Officer Career Summaries Section L-R , pp 402-403 ( Memento of the original August 9, 2014 Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 22, 2015  
2. ↑ Ford: Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II. 2000, pp. 50-51.
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ History of the Lufttransportgeschwader 63. (PDF) In: Luftwaffe.de. Lufttransportgeschwader 63, pp. 7, 10–11, 17–18 , accessed on March 21, 2013 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Kaiser: The knight cross bearers of the fighter pilots (Volume 2). 2011, p. 90.
7. ↑ Fellgiebel: The bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945. 2000, p. 366.