DO32P03 WWII ERICH HARTMANN

Erich Hartmann was born in April 1922 and died in September 1993 at the age of 71. It is assumed that he was the greatest German fighter ace of the Second World War - he is assigned the reference 352[!!!] certain and probable air victories. Erich Hartmann spent a large part of his youth in the Far East, which resulted from the professional duties of his father - Alfred. He did not return to Germany until 1928 and quickly became interested in aviation. As a teenager, he learned to fly gliders, and in 1939 (at the age of 17) he obtained a pilot's license. At the end of 1940, he joined the Luftwaffe and began his military aviation training. He came to the front in 1942, exactly to the famous one Jagdgeschwader 52, where he was additionally trained by a German fighter ace - Alfred Grislawski, who already then noticed in Erich Hartmann, a talented pilot. He achieved his first air victory in November 1942, knocking down the Il-2 attack plane. He took part in the air fights over the Kursk region in July 1943 and shot down as many as seven Soviet machines in just one day (July 7). In early August 1943, he already had 50 air victories, and at the end of that month a further 48! Then he was shot down and taken prisoner by the Russians, but he managed to escape from captivity. By August 1944, he already had 300 downed enemy machines! It is worth adding that in June 1944, he fought the American pilots for the first time, destroying four P-51 Mustangs. A specific highlight of Erich Hartmann's career was the air victory he won on May 8, 1945, which was probably also the last German air victory in World War II. During World War II, Erich Hartmann made 1,404 combat flights, fought 825 times and achieved 352 air victories in their course. After World War II, he was in Soviet captivity for 10 years. In 1955 he returned to West Germany and joined the West German Luftwaffe.