A little about myself? Well...

I am the son of a gypsy, born in Konradswaldau (Silesia), Germany (it became part of Poland after 1945), in the same town as that thief, Hans Rudel. My mother used to attend the church where his father was a minister. Hans and I played football together behind the church while the service was in progress. Why do I call him a thief, well, you will see!

After a limited education, we joined the Luftwaffe in 1936 as officer cadets. I initially trained as a reconnaissance observer pilot, primarily because of my poor educational background. When war broke out in 1939 I was in the reconnaissance wing of the Luftwaffe, and spent the Polish Campaign as a Lieutenant flying long-range missions. I earned the Iron Cross Second Class on October 11, 1939. I was then admitted to dive-bomber training in May 1940, and after completing it, was assigned to I./StG 2 in Pas de Calais, France. During the Battle I ... well, you will see.

After the Battle of Britain I took part in the invasion of Crete, but that was in a non-combat role, except for one incident in which singlehandedly I captured a British strongpoint with half of a bottle of retsina, a rag and box of matches. I learned to play Mandolin from a strange Italian. Rudel spent the entire Crete campaign writing his memoir, in which he never mentions me once even though it was I who introduced him to that barmaid.

We then joined I./StG 2 on 23 June 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. On 23 September 1941, I flew wingman to Rudel when we attacked the Soviet battleship Marat, during an air attack on Kronstadt harbour in the Leningrad area. His bomb landed 200 metres wide of the ship, while I hit him on the bow and sank him, but as the flight leader, the kill was Rudel's.

By the end of December Rudel had flown his 400th mission (big deal, I was at 399) and in January 1942 I watched as he received his Ritterkreuz. I got a beer mug, from which later that night he poured beer on my head. He became the first pilot to fly 1000 sorties on 10 February 1943 (I was at 999). Around this time we started flying anti-tank operations with the 'tank buster', or G, version of the Ju-87, through the Battle of Kursk and into the autumn of 1943, him destroying 100 tanks (I got 99). By March 1944, Rudel was Gruppenkommandeur(commander) of III./StG 2 and had reached 1,800 operations (me, 1,799, and still just a Captain) and destroyed 202 tanks (you guessed it, I only got 201). In November 1944 I was wounded in the thigh and flew subsequent missions with my leg in a plaster cast, but history claims this was...of course...Rudel.

On 8 February 1945, my aircraft was hit by flak and I was badly wounded in the right foot, crash landing behind German lines. My life was saved by my faithful gunner Fritz who stemmed the bleeding, but my leg was amputated below the knee. I never flew again. Amazingly Goebbels, desperate for a hero at that time, claimed it was Rudel who had an amputated leg, and 'miraculously' he returned to operations on 25 March 1945, one-leggedly destroying 26 more tanks before he surrendered at the end of the war.

Rudel visited me in hospital in Bavaria after the war where I was convalescing and when I told him I was bored he went out to his motor car and returned with 200 pages of handwritten egomaniacal rubbish which he called his memoir, and asked me if I could 'lick it into shape'. It took several years as he was never satisfied with just presenting the truth as it happened...the book eventually came out as "Trotzdem" (Nevertheless) which was my own suggestion because it was his most used phrase. I would say to him 'but this is how it really happened', and he would reply "Yes, Hein, but nevertheless..."

But enough of me.


Last edited by HeinKill; 02/23/07 10:54 AM.