Best Luftwaffe Memoires Please

enquirer · Post by **enquirer** » Fri Oct 04, 2002 10:18 am

Can anyone recommend good first-hand accounts of Luftwaffe operations, particulary relating to 1940-41? Many thanks.

charlie don't surf · Post by **charlie don't surf** » Sat Oct 05, 2002 7:17 am

Adolf Galland wrote a good memoir.

regards

mikerock · Post by **mikerock** » Tue Oct 15, 2002 9:22 pm

There's a biography about Hans-Ulrich Rudel, called Stuka Pilot that was interesting. Covers his exploits from the beginning of the war to the end, on the Eastern Front.

You can get teh hardcover at Amazon.com

The copy I had (read it when I was twelve) was softcover, and it few pictures that I can recall.

--Mike

Jussi · Post by **Jussi** » Wed Oct 16, 2002 2:36 pm

Here´ a few:

1. "I Flew for Hitler", Heinz Knoke. Covers the entire war, very good.

2. "The One That Got Away", Kendal Burt & James Leasor. About the fighter Franz von Werra and his daring escape from a allied prison camp in Canada 1941. Not much combat but very entertaining.

3. "Die Strasse von Messina" (The Strait of Messina), Johannes Steinhoff. Desperate dogfights above Sicily 1943. Grim reading from a fighter commanders diary.

4. "The First and The last", Adolf Galland. Luftwaffes youngest general, an amazing career.

5. "Stuka Pilot", Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Not much 40-41, but a great book on the Eastern Front. No lack of faith there. A hard working flier until the end. Lost a leg? So what, he still flies and smashes tanks. Interestingely, he performs so bad during training that he doesn´ get to fly combat missions until Barbarossa when his talents really shows by rendering him every award there is to get. But he doesn´ give a damn, he still wants up in the air. There are tanks to be knocked out.

charlie don't surf · Post by **charlie don't surf** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 6:38 am

Actually Heinz Knoke's memoirs are named "I flew for the führer'. I managed to find this book in a second hand book store today, he seems to have been a big anti- communist. The book seems to give a pretty big picture of what it would be like to be a fighterpilot. Knoke was a heavily decorated fighter pilot who managed to shoot down 52 enemy aircrafts.

regards

Apsynt · Post by **Apsynt** » Mon Oct 28, 2002 1:45 am

There is also a series of 3 books by Ulrich Steinhilper going from his training days to capture and eventual escape attempts.

enquirer · Post by **enquirer** » Thu Nov 07, 2002 8:36 am

Thanks to all.