Stuka Pilot - Hans Ulrich Rudel

Hey everybody,
I'm currently reading "Stuka Pilot", an autobiography of Hans Ulrich Rudel. He started flying Stukas on the Eastern Front over Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow. Shot down over 12 times (!) he ended the war flying a Fw190 with an amputated leg. He singlehandedly destroyed 500 Russian tanks and a Soviet battleship.

Does anyone have anything else of interest on him?

 

Good choice of book, AFR. You can find out more about him at ; -

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen9.htm

 

There was some comment on this forum last year or so about the 500 tank claim. Knocking out 500 tanks singlehanded in approx. 3 years is a bit hard to believe. I feel he had some help from his squadron mates but since most did not survive he took a bit more credit than he deserved. That is only my opinion but just visulize how huge an area 500 Russian tanks would cover just parked in a field. And he is claiming to kill 500 tanks who were moving and shooting back at him. German version of Rambo maybe ?

 

Hey TA,
You may be right about a bit of exageration (don't we all?), but he was flying multiple sorties each day. His airfield would come under attack from T-34s quite frequently in the later days of the war. In this case a sortie could yield multiple tanks.

Also, he flew a bit more "extreme" than other piots in his squadron. He writes that "often we flew at 15-30 feet above the tanks". This would have been hard to do while simultaneously trying to hit the tank and not crash.

 

I have no doubt he was really good at busting tanks, I just wondered if he was that good.

 

Personally, I doubt it. Rudel started off using bombs in tank busting. There are any number of studies from the Western front in 44 that show bombs to be of limited value in attacking armor. With his later use of 3.7cm cannon these would be more effective but, the limited ammunition supply would indicate he likely could not have gotten more than 1 or 2 tanks per sorte using these.
So, I would think his claim was an exaggeration, just as the claims of many other pilots were.

 

Personally I think the guy although an excellent die-hard pilot did not score above 300 soviet tanks on a personal basis. Much of his sotry is propaganda based, a prime Nazi tool he was to bolster the sagging moral on the Ost Front during late 44-45. I feel his claims actually should of been given to many of his 10th staffle panzer mates. Doesn't anyone feel his calim ofer 500 is a little unclear as the closest Panzer ace had under 200 kills. C'mon the man has 300 more than anyone else ? ! Suspicious it sounds to me. The Panzerstaffel Weiß came out during the Kursk escapades so this is really the first time we see a unified attempt at Ju 87G's in flight agasint Soviet armor thrusts .........

 

I think you should take into consideration that he had 1500 documented operational sorties (this could be propaganda too, however). In one day he flew 15! He was also assigned to an experimental Stuka unit equiped with 3.7cm cannon in '43, giving him 2 years on the Eastern Front.

 

a doubt full documentation and the Panzerstaffel I named in my upper posting as Weiß was the first armored staffel before SG 1,2,3,9 and 77 received theirs

 

Just wondering how much havoc the Stukas really caused back in 1940 when they were credited for destroying the French tanks in great numbers. Got any figures, TA?