Re: Hans-Ulrich Rudel Ju 87G ace

Brad Meyer wrote:
His politics had little to do with his combat record.

Then we will have to agree to disagree.

My own take is that Rudel was first singled out by Richthofen,
commanding VIII Fliegerkorps the Luftwaffe specialized ground-support
force and a devout Nazi himself with not a little political clout to
help his career.

Being favorable to the National-Socialist regime was a sine qua non
condition for becoming the national hero that Rudel was turned into
after volunteering for the Eastern Front and accomplishing his 1,000th
mission. From that point on, he was hot political stuff and his claims
were unlikely to be challenged by bureaucrats.

Unless you recon they started cooking the books in '39 with an eye to
Rudel's memiors and eventual defeat, there is a small issue of
documentation.

Rudel's enormous sortie count is not in doubt, the man was an
extraordinary flier.

What I assumed "his stats" referred to was the number of enemy tanks
claimed destroyed, which I do question.

Firstly, there would be no need to cook the books, all it would take
would be to take his claims at face value (and see above about how
poor a career move that could be).

Secondly, Rudel's first combat dive-bombing sortie was in Russia, so
we're looking at 1941 rather than 1939.

Thirdly, all studies of the topic have shown that airmen considerably
overclaim WRT losses inflicted on the ground, particularly so tanks
destroyed. A tank is hard to kill. Some of the people who did bother
to study particular engagements to match Rudel's claims with Soviet
loss records found that 1/ Rudel was being systematically vague about
date and time when he claimed big scores, 2/ whenever a match could be
made, Soviet loss records (for all causes, not just air attacks, let
alone air attacks from Rudel) didn't come near confirming Rudel's
claims.

The figure of 500+ tanks destroyed must therefore be taken with a
liberal helping of salt.

IMO.


LC

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