In November 1941, following his 94th official victory, he was chosen by Hermann Göring to command Germany's fighter force as General der Jagdflieger, succeeding renowned ace Oberst.Werner Mölders who had just died in an air crash (having himself just succeeded another German aviation legend, Ernst Udet). In November 1942 a promotion to Generalmajor made Galland the youngest officer to attain General rank in Germany. Galland was now responsible for deciding the ongoing tactical and operational doctrine of the Luftwaffe's fighter strategies. No longer flying operationally, one of his first tasks was organising the successful air protection for the Channel Dash of the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the cruiser Prinz Eugen. In February 1942 the Germans determined to bring the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Brest, where the RAF regularly bombed them, to better protected anchorages in Norway. On the night of February 11, the big ships slipped out of Brest. While the British had the harbor under close watch, a series of accidents and mistakes allowed the German ships to get out undetected. By dawn, they were off Cherbourg where German fighters began to escort them. Further British misjudgements hindered accurate identification of the warships until mid-day. By that time, they were nearly at the Straits of Dover, under heavy escort by Fw 190's and Bf 109s of JG.2 and JG.26. Few British strike aircraft were ready and they launched a pitifully small group of Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers, led by Lt. Cdr. Eugene Esmonde. Despite Spitfire fighter cover, the Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts destroyed all seven Swordfish; Esmonde earned a posthumous Victoria Cross. As Adolf Galland put it in The First and the Last, "For two hours in full daylight German warships had been passing along the English coast, following a route which in the history of British sea supremacy no enemy has dared to take since the seventeenth century." Later that afternoon, many more British bombers went after the battle cruisers, but the German fighters and bad weather prevented them from hitting their targets. The three ships made it to German ports that evening, in no small way thanks to the Fw 190. Walter Krupinski was born on 11 November 1920, in the town of Domnau in East Prussia, and grew up in Braunsberg. Kuprinski had two younger brothers, Paul and Günther. Paul joined the Kriegsmarine and entered the Unterseeboot service. He was killed in action on 11 November 1944 while serving on U-771, which was sunk off the Norwegian coast by HMS Venturer. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Trautloft was one of six pilots sent aboard the Ursaramo to Cadiz to secretly aid General Franco. With them, the pilots had six crated Heinkel He 51 biplane fighters. The men and machines arrived in Spain on 7 August 1936. Originally, they were intended to act as instructors, but the Spanish pilots struggled with learning to fly the He-51, so the German pilots soon took up combat duties. On 25 August Trautloft scored his first victory, shooting down a Republican fighter. A few days later, shortly after scoring his second victory, Trautloft was himself shot down. This was the first Luftwaffe pilot to be shot down in Spain. Trautloft escaped capture, however, and continued flying combat missions. As the war dragged on, the Soviets sent better planes to aid the Republicans. Among these were the agile monoplane Polikarpov I-15 and Polikarpov I-16 fighters. The He-51 proved no match for these new aircraft, and after pressure from the German pilots, four of the new prototype Bf-109V3 were dispatched to the theater. Trautloft flew one of these new fighters, and scored a further three victories in Spain. The Rudel Scandal of 1976 (German: Rudel-Affäre) was a political affair in Germany concerning the German Army's dealing with the traditions of the Wehrmacht and its political implications. In the spring of 1976, businessman and former Luftwaffe Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel, who had returned from Paraguay and earlier been a leading member of the Neo-Nazi German Reich Party, was invited by high ranking Bundeswehr officers to a tradition meeting of the Aufklärungsgeschwader 51 "Immelmann". Rudel was considered a persona non grata by the Ministry of Defense because of his undiminished admiration of Adolf Hitler, but finally he was invited, and attended as the last commander of Schlachtgeschwader 2 "Immelmann", after an intervention of the opposition's spokesman for Defense, Manfred Wörner. Present at the meeting, where Rudel signed his books and gave autographs to soldiers, were the Luftwaffe Generals Karl Heinz Franke and Walter Krupinski. Later on, the Generals publicly compared Rudel's past as a Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career of prominent Social Democrat leader Herbert Wehner, who had been a member of the German Communist Party in the 1930s and who had lived in Moscow during World War II, where he was allegedly involved in NKVD operations. Calling Wehner an extremist, they said that Rudel, after all, was an honourable man, and "hadn't stolen the family silver or anything else". When these remarks became public, the Federal Minister of Defence Georg Leber ordered them into early retirement as of 1 November 1976. Leber, himself a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), however, was heavily criticised for his actions by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition, and the scandal contributed to the Minister's retirement in early 1978. Hans-Ulrich Rudel On September 23, 1941, he sank the Soviet battleship Marat, during an air attack on Kronstadt harbor in the Leningrad area, with a hit to the bow with a 1000 kg bomb. There were no Allied fighters to accompany the bomber stream, as none at the time had the range. The bombers had to protect themselves from the German fighters. The next development was the special Pathfinder squadrons, whose tasks were to mark the significant points on the route and over the target areas. The Pathfinders used a variety of flares and coloured markers. On the eve of Nuremberg “Bomber Streams”of up to 1,000 aircraft were attacking at night, without much fighter support, following a set route to and from the objective. The objective was marked by the Pathfinders. “Spoof’s” Another tactic meant to fool the German night-fighters was the “spoof’ or diversionary attack. When a raid was mounted a certain number of aircraft would be used on spoofs. Each spoof would be intended to divert the German fighters away from the Bomber Stream. Wild Boar In addition to facing the Luftwaffe’s Tame Boar night-fighters swimming in the Bomber Stream, Bomber Command aircraft also had to contend with attacks from faster, more manoeverable single-engined fighters. These fighters were not equipped for night fighting, but could be utilized under specific circumstances. For the most part the Messerschmitt Bf 109’s and Focke-Wulf 190’s operated over or near targets in order to take advantage of the illumination afforded by flares, searchlights and fires started by the incendiaries and high explosives dropped by thea ttackers. Together with reflections from cloud cover, the searchlights and ground fires silhouetted the bombers enabling the nimbler fighters to swoop in from above in traditional attack fashion. They had to be very careful not to be hit by their own anti-aircraft guns, so they usually operated at altitudes of 30,000 feet or more, well above the bombers. Code named Wilde Sau (Wild Boar), the single-engined attackers, entered the battle when the target had been determined. Piloted by less experienced, comparatively undisciplined pilots the Wild Boar squadrons achieved relatively minor returns in relation to their losses. They were often brought down by their flak, accidents, and fuel shortages. Mother Nature’s Defences Bombing was dependent on a number of variables associated with Mother Nature, such as the season, the weather, the winds, the clouds and the moon. Because the bombing took place at night it was necessary to have the correct hours of darkness. Therefore targets deep inside Germany could only be bombed on long winter nights. Severe weather could ground a mission. So could too much cloud or too little or the wrong type of clouds. No cloud would give enough cover for the bombers to conceal themselves from the fighters. Low cloud would obscure a target, sometimes causing an operation to be called off. Consequently the weather forecast was crucial to the success or failure of a raid. The phases of the moon were also important as the high moon was considered too bright, and would give the night-fighters an advantage. All these items would have to be taken into consideration as to whether a raid was a “go” or was “scrubbed”. Learning From The Past: A Fighter Pilot's Obligation CSC 1984 SUBJECT AREA Aviation LEARNING FROM THE PAST: A FIGHTER PILOT'S OBLIGATION Submitted to Mr. Berens In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for Written Communications The Marine Corps Command and Staff College Quantico, Virginia Major E. W. Hacker United States Marine Corps April 6, 1984 OUTLINE Thesis Statement: Although there have been significant tech- nological advances in the capabilities of fighter aircraft since World War I, the basic tactics of aerial combat have not changed. One cannot leave the subject of fighter tactics with- out mentioning Erich Hartmann's four principles, which sup- port Boelcke's Dicta: See--Decide--Attack--Reverse. Seeing the enemy first allowed Hartmann to decide how the action would begin. He carefully evaluated the enemy, always looking for the element of surprise.