Focke-Wulf Fw190 - Pilots and Armament. Part 5 - Compiled by German Dzib

Pilots

Otto Kittel

Otto "Bruno" Kittel

Otto "Bruno" Kittel (21 February 1917 – 14 or 16 February 1945) was a World War II Luftwaffe flying ace. He flew 583 combat missions on the Eastern Front, claiming 267 aerial victories, making him the fourth highest scoring ace in aviation history. (45)(46) Kittel claimed all of his victories flying the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 against the Red Air Force. (47)
Kittel joined the Luftwaffe in 1939, at the age of 22 and flew his first combat missions in 1941. (48) In spring 1941, he joined Jagdgeschwader 54 (JG 54) supporting Army Group North on the Eastern Front. Kittel claimed his first victory on 22 June 1941, the opening day of Operation Barbarossa. Kittel took time to amass his personal tally of aerial victories. By February 1943, he reached 39 kills, relatively insignificant when compared with some other German aces. In 1943, his tally began to increase when JG 54 began to operate the Fw 190. Kittel earned the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes) on 29 October 1943, for reaching 120 aerial victories. By the time he was officially awarded the decoration he had a tally of 123. A large number of his Soviet victims included the IL-2 Shturmovik aircraft, leading the German Army to call him the "Butcher Killer", a nickname they had given to the tough Shturmovik. (49)
During the remainder of World War II, Kittel was credited with 144 other aerial victories, which earned him the covetedKnight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. On his 583rd combat mission, he was shot down and killed by the air gunner of a Shturmovik on 14 or 16 February 1945. Kittel was the most successful German fighter pilot to be killed in action. (50)

Anti bomber pilots, in defense of the Reich. Part 5

Focke-Wulf Fw190A-8 'White 21' of feldwebel Fritz Buchholz of II./JG 6
 sits on the apron outside a hangar at Königsberg-Neumrk, on the doors
 of which has been painted a full-size frontal rendition of B-17.
 The Gruppe was formed from the Me410-eqipped II./ZG 26 in the summer
 of 1944. Buchholz had previously flown the twin-engined
 Messerschmitt Me410 fitted with the 5cm BK cannon.

"One fourth of the German war economy was neutralized because of direct bomb damage, the resulting delays, shortages and roundabout solutions, and the spending on anti-aircraft, civil defence, repair, and removal of factories to safer locations. The raids were so large and often repeated that in city after city, the repair system broke down. The bombing prevented the full mobilization of German economic potential."

RAF estimates of destruction of "built up areas" of major German cities:
Berlin 33%, Cologne 61%, Dortmund 54%, Dresden 59%, Düsseldorf 64%, Essen 50%, Frankfurt 52%, Hamburg 75%, Leipzig 20%, Munich 42%, Bochum 83%, Bremen 60%, Chemnitz 41%, Dessau 61%, Duisburg 48%, Hagen 67%, Hanover 60%, Kassel 69%, Kiel 50%, Mainz 80%, Magdeburg 41%, Mannheim 64%, Nuremberg 51%, Stettin 53%, Stuttgart 46%.

A pilot catches up with his rest on the grass beside Focke-Wulf Fw190A-8 'White 5' of II.(Sturm)/JG 300 at Holzkirchen in late August 1944. The aircraft is fitted with armoured glass side windscreen panels as well as armoured panels on either side of the cockpit. A parachute is ready on the wing of 'White 10', the next aircraft in line.

Messerschmitt Me262A-1a 'Green 3'of the Geschwderstab of JG 7 prepared to move of across the concrete surface at Brandenburg-Briest in February or early march 1945. the aircraft, finished in a relatively rare application of streaked horizontal lines, has been fitted with a pair of 21cm WGr air-to-air mortar tubes visible beneath the fuselage aft of the nose wheel.

Erich Rudorffer - longest living the Ace of Luftwaffe with more than 100 victories

Erich Rudorffer

Major Erich Rudorffer (born 1 November 1917) is a German former Luftwaffe fighter ace, one of a handful who served with the Luftwaffe through the whole of World War II. He is the 7th most successful fighter pilot in the history of air warfare and, since 2014, both the oldest jet fighter ace and the most successful ace still living, as well as the only living fighter pilot with more than 100 victories since the death of Walter Schuck in March 2015. Rudorffer claimed a total of 222 victories, fighting in all the major German theaters of war, including the European and Mediterranean Theatre of Operations and the Eastern Front. During the war he flew more than 1000 combat missions, was engaged in aerial combat over 300 times, was shot down by flak and enemy fighters 16 times and had to take to his parachute 9 times. He distinguished himself by shooting down 13 enemy planes in 17 minutes. His 222 aerial victories include 58 heavily armoured Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft. He also claimed that he sank a British submarine on 19 May 1941 off the Isle of Portland but Royal Navy losses do not corroborate this claim and the Luftwaffe only credited him with damaging the submarine. Rudorffer is the last living recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.