Wolfgang Falck (fighter pilot)

Wolfgang Falck (born August 19, 1910 in Berlin ; † March 13, 2007 in St. Ulrich am Pillersee ) was a German fighter pilot and, along with Josef Kammhuber, is one of the founders and organizers of German night hunting in World War II .

Military career

Falck completed his flying training in 1932 at the secret flying school and testing facility of the Reichswehr in the Soviet Lipetsk , i.e. at a time when the German Reich was officially prohibited from having air forces due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty . After the Luftwaffe was officially founded in 1935, he became a squadron adjutant in the "Richthofen" fighter wing and from July 1938 was a squadron captain of the 8./JG 132. He took part in the attack on Poland . In February 1940 he became commander of I. ( Gruppe ) / ZG (Destroyer Squadron) 1, which he led during the occupation of Denmark and in the western campaign in 1940 . On June 26, 1940, he set up the Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 as a commodore , which he handed over to Werner Streib in 1943 . On October 1, 1940, he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . He then worked as a teacher at various German night fighter pilot schools until the end of the war in 1945. The fact that he achieved eight aerial victories, an unusually low number of kills for a Knight's Cross, is explained on the one hand by the fact that night fighters generally came up with fewer missions than those who flew their missions during the day, and on the other hand because he did the most During the war I was busy with organizational and training issues. As a friend of the Hitler assassin Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg , he came into the crosshairs of the investigators after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . Since he successfully applied to Adolf Galland to be transferred to Belgrade , where he became Balkan fighter pilot, he was able to evade the Gestapo .

post war period

At first he made his living as a warehouse worker. He later became the managing director of a medium-sized company. In 1961 he received an offer from the US aviation industry and became the German representative of North American Aviation and later of McDonnell Douglas .

literature

• Wolfgang Falck, Dr. Kurt Braatz (Ed.): Falken Years. Memories 1910–2003 . Twenty-nine six publishers, Moosburg 2004, ISBN 3-9807935-2-4 (Falck's autobiography).
• Raymond F. Toliver, Trevor J. Constable : These were the German fighter pilot aces 1939-1945 . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 978-3-87943-193-9 .

See also

• List of German fighter pilots in World War II

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Falck: Falcon Years. Memories 1910–2003. 2004, p. 23ff.
2. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 302.