352 Kills: The Story of Nazi Germany's Most Deadly Fighter Ace

Warfare History Network

Security, Asia

"Simultaneously banking and diving, he almost hit the ground before pulling up, closing to just 200 feet, and opening fire on the Russian’s thinly protected oil cooler. As thick black smoke gushed from his underbelly, the Shturmovik pilot dropped from formation and headed eastward in a shallow dive in hopes of finding a clear area to belly land. Hartmann was right behind him."

In the closing months of the war in Europe, the Western and Eastern Fronts drew so close together that Hartmann encountered numerous Allied warplanes. The Blond Knight shot down seven Mustangs for his only non-Soviet kills. On May 8, 1945, he shot down the Yak-7 over Brunn for victory number 352, making him the highest scoring ace in military history.

By May 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler had been dead for more than a week. Germany was in the act of formally surrendering to the Soviets and the Western Allies, so occupying Red Army troops in the eastern German town of Brunn were not expecting to witness what may have been World War II’s last dogfight over Europe.

They were watching entranced as a Red Air Force pilot entertained them with a one-plane air show. He expertly put his Yakovlev Yak-9 single-engine fighter through a series of intricate rolls, climbs, dives, and stalls while the infantrymen below applauded. Suddenly, a lone German Messerschmitt Me-109 dove on the unsuspecting Russian, riddling his Yak with machine-gun bullets and 20mm cannon shells and sending it spinning toward the German countryside. As the stunned soldiers gathered around the oily bonfire that seconds earlier had been a lethal flying machine, the Luftwaffe pilot banked westward toward his final landing. Erich Hartmann, aerial warfare’s supreme ace, had just scored his last kill—number 352.

Recommended: This Was the Plane That Almost Replaced the F-22 Raptor