Hans Ulrich Rudel - Stuka Pilot - Original Uncensored Edition

Stuka Pilot

by

Hans Ulrich Rudel

First published by Oswald Mosley

Euphorian Books

1952

Stuka Pilot

by

Hans Ulrich Rudel

Copyright 2013 Black House Publishing Ltd

Printed by kind permission of the Friends of Oswald Mosley and the Mosley Estate.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Foreword

AS so often occurs during a war particularly in the Air Forces, you often hear the names of pilots on the opposite side. It is seldom that you meet them subsequently. At the end of this war some of us had the opportunity of meeting several well-known pilots of the German Air Force, who had hitherto been just names to us. Now, 7 years later, some of the names escape me, but I well remember Galland, Rudel and a German night fighter pilot called Mayer. They visited the Central Fighter Establishment at Tangmere in June 1945 for a couple of days and some of their opposite numbers in the Royal Air Force were able to exchange views on air tactics and aircraft, always an absorbing topic amongst pilots. A coincidence which amused all of us, if I may be excused this anecdote, occurred when Mayer was talking to our well-known fighter pilot Brance Burbidge and discovered that Brance had shot him down over his own aerodrome one night as he was circling to land.

Having been a prisoner in Germany for much of the war I had heard of Hans Ulrich Rudel. His exploits on the Eastern Front with his dive bomber were from time to time given much publicity in the German press. It was therefore with great interest that I met him when he came over in June 1945. Not long before he arrived Rudel had lost one leg below the knee, as he describes in this book. At the time of this visit that well-known R.A.F. character, Dick Atcherley, was the Commandant at Tangmere. Others there were Frank Carey, Bob Tuck (who had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany with me), Razz Berry, Hawk Wells and Roland Beamont (now Chief Test Pilot for English Electric). We all felt that somehow we should try and get an artificial leg for Rudel. It was very sad that we were unable to do this because although a plaster cast and the requisite measurements were taken it was discovered that his amputation was too recent for an artificial leg to be made and fitted and we were reluctantly compelled to give up the idea.

We all read an autobiography written by someone we have met, if only for a short time, with more interest than that of a stranger. This book of Rudels is a first-hand account of his life in the German Air Force throughout the war, mainly in the East. I do not agree with a number of the conclusions he draws or with some of his thoughts. I was, after all, on the other side.

The book is not broad in its scope because it is confined to the activities of one man and a brave one -- waging a war in very single-minded fashion. It does however shed an interesting light on Rudels opposite numbers on the Eastern Front, the Russian Air Force pilots. This is perhaps the most revealing part of the whole book. I am happy to write this short foreword to Rudels book, since although I only met him for a couple of days he is, by any standards, a gallant chap and I wish him luck.

Group Captain Douglas Bader, D.S.O., D.F.C.

Hans Ulrich Rudel

1 - From Umbrella to Dive Bomber

1924 My home is the rectory of the little village of Seiferdau in Silesia; I am eight. One Sunday my father and mother go into the neighbouring town of Schweidnitz for an Aviation Day. I am furious that I am not allowed to go with them, and when they return my parents have to tell me over and over again what they have seen there. And so I hear about a man who jumped from a great height with a parachute and came safely down to earth. This delights me, and I badger my sisters for an exact description of the man and the parachute. Mother sews me a little model, I attach a stone to it and am proud when stone and parachute slowly drift to the ground. I think to myself that what a stone can do I must be able to do too, and when I am left alone for a couple of hours the following Sunday I lose no time in exploiting my new discovery.

Upstairs to the first floor! I climb on to the windowsill with an umbrella, open it up, take a quick look down, and before I have time to be afraid I jump. I land on a soft flower-bed and am surprised to find that I have twisted every muscle and actually broken a leg. In the tricky way in which umbrellas are apt to behave, the thing has turned inside out and hardly broke my fall. But nevertheless I abide by my resolve: I will be an airman.

After a brief flirtation with modern languages at the local school I take up classics, and learn Greek and Latin. At Sagen, Niesky, Grlitz and Lauban my father is moved to these different parishes in the lovely province of Silesia my schooling is completed. My holidays are devoted almost exclusively to sport, including motor-cycling; athletics in summer and skiing in winter lay the foundations of a robust constitution for later life.

I enjoy everything; so I do not specialise in any particular field. Our little village does not offer very much scope my knowledge of sporting tackle is derived solely from magazines so I practise pole-vaulting by using a long tree-prop to vault over my mothers clothes-line. Thus later with a proper bamboo pole I can clear a respectable height.

As a ten year old boy I go off to the Eulengebirge, twenty three miles away, with the six foot long skis given to me as a Christmas present, and teach myself skiing.... I stand a couple of planks resting on a sawing-horse of my fathers, this gives me an upward slope. I give the contraption the once-over to make sure it is firmly fixed. No flunking now I open the throttle of my motorbike and sail up the boards ....and over. I land on the other side, swerve wildly and back again for another run at the planks and the trusty sawing-horse! It never enters my head that in addition to all this I ought to be a good scholar, much to my parents distress. I play almost every conceivable prank on my teachers. But the question of my future becomes a more serious problem as matriculation looms nearer. One of my sisters is studying medicine, and consequently the possibility of finding the large sum of money needed to have me trained as a civil air-pilot does not even come under consideration a pity. So I decide to become a sports instructor.

Quite unexpectedly the Luftwaffe is created, and with it a demand for applicants for a reserve of officers. Black sheep that I am, I see little hope of passing the difficult entrance examination. Several fellows I know, rather older than myself, who have previously tried to get in have been unlucky. Apparently only sixty out of six hundred candidates will be selected, and I cannot imagine any likelihood of my being among this ten per cent. Fate, however, disposes otherwise; and in August 1936 I have in my pocket the notification of my admission to the Military School at Wildpark-Werder for next December. Two months Labour Service work on the regulation of the Neisse at Muskau follow matriculation in the autumn. In the first term at Wildpark-Werder we recruits are put through the mill. Our infantry training is completed in six months. Aircraft we see only from the ground, with an especial longing when we happen to be flat on our faces. The rule of no smoking and no drinking, the virtual restriction of all leisure time to physical exercise and games, the pretence of indifference to the distractions of the nearby capital, are tiresome. I take a rather dim view of my milk-drinking existence, and that is putting it mildly. I earn no black marks in my military and athletic training and so my supervisional officer, Lt. Feldmann, is not dissatisfied. In some respects, however, I am not altogether successful in living down the reputation of being a queer fish.