Luftwaffe Fighter Aces (17 page)

Walter Nowotny was the top-scoring Austrian pilot of the war with 258 victories, all but three in the East. His first victories came on 19 July 1941 and the 250th on 14 October 1943. After several months commanding a fighter school he returned to operations with the Me 262 and was killed in a battle with Mustangs in November 1944. (Via Bruce Robertson).

Experten
of
JG 26.
On the left is
Kommodore
Josef
‘
Pips’ Priller, just 5ft 4in tall but with 101 victories, all in the West. Of these, 85 were fighters, eleven were four-engine bombers and five were twin-engine bombers. To the right is Adolf ‘Addi’ Glunz (71 victories, 68 in the West, including 20 four-engine bombers and three Mosquitos). In 574 sorties Glunz was never shot down or wounded. (Via Bruce Robertson).

Erich
‘
Bubi’ Hartmann of
JG 52,
the highest scoring fighter pilot of all time. His 352 victories were achieved between October 1942 and the last day of the war, during which time he flew over 1,350 sorties without apparently experiencing combat fatigue. After the war he became a Colonel in the new
Luftwaffe.
(Via Bruce Robertson).

Johannes ‘Macky’ Steinhoff (left), seen here as a young
Leutnant
in 1939. Of his 176 victories, 148 were scored in the East. In the final weeks of the war he became an ace with the Me 262. Badly burned in a take-off accident in the jet in April 1945, he survived to command the new
Luftwaffe
post-war. (Via Bruce Robertson).

Heinz
‘
Pritzl
’
Baer, one of the few ‘first-to-last
’ Experten.
His score of 220 was fairly evenly divided over all fronts, which puts him among the all-time greats. The top-scoring NCO pilot in the Battle of Britain, he ended as the top-scoring jet ace of the war. Ironically, he was killed in a light aircraft crash in April 1957. (Via Bruce Robertson).

Many different models of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 saw action. This is the Bf 109B, first used in the Spanish Civil War by
J 88.
The next few years saw it progressively upgraded into a far more potent machine. (Via
FlyPast).

A Bf 109G-4 in Russia, showing the sleeker lines of the cowling. This aircraft was flown by Wolf-Dietrich ‘Fürst’ Wilcke (162 victories) when he was
Kommodore
of
JG 3.
Returned to the West, he was shot down by Mustangs on 23 March 1944. (Via Bruce Robertson).

The Focke-Wulf FW 190A gave British pilots nightmares when it was first introduced. This particular machine is an AS, flown by Armin Faber of
III/JG 2,
who on 23 June 1943 landed in error in South Wales. (Via
FlyPast
)
.

The Messerschmitt Bf 110C
Zerstörer
enjoyed moderate success in Poland but was outclassed by the RAF single-seaters in the Battle of Britain. (Via
FlyPast).

Numerically the most important
Luftwaffe
night fighter was the Bf 110G, even though the antler-type radar antennae, engine exhaust shrouds and the need for a third crewman all reduced its performance significantly. (Via
FlyPast).

The Messerschmitt Me 163
Komet
rocket fighter. Operational limitations were such that few pilots scored even one victory with the type. (Via
FlyPast).