Who is gunther rall

Everybody expected the invasion all along the Channel coast, wondering when it was coming and how they were coming and so on. At that time he developed his ideas, and you could see that Hitler was hopping around, very uncertain. Also, you know, one thing that was very typical of him was his stating how the British were always having problems with their opposition parties, the Labor Party, the labor unions and so on.

It was clear to me that this man was a little out of his mind. Hitler did not have a really clear, serious concept of the situation. Whatever their problems, the British come together during war; they are one nation. Rall: Well, it was certainly a new dimension. The first time I sat in it, I was most surprised about the silence.

If you are sitting in a standard piston-powered aircraft, you have a hell of a noise in the radio headset, background noise and static and such, which I did not experience in the Me It was absolutely clear. With radio from the ground they controlled the flight. Totally clear. One other thing was you had to advance the throttles very slowly. If you went forward too fast, you might overheat and set the engines on fire.

Also, if you were up to 8, rpm, or whatever it was, you released the brakes and you were taxiing. Unlike the Bf, which had no front wheel and was a tail dragger, the Me had a tricycle landing gear. It was a new sensation, beautiful visibility. You could go down the runway and see straight forward. This was, however, also a weak moment for the Me The aircraft at this point was a little bit stiff and slow during landing and takeoff, but fine when coming up to speed gradually. It was absolutely superior to the old aircraft.

Rall: You know, I never did get to shoot the weapons because when I had about 15 or 20 hours I became commander of the JG, which was equipped with Bfs. I only made some training flights, but never flew the jet in combat. Rall: I came to the unit in late February or early March This was no longer a wing, just a ruin of the former wing because one group was in the north. As you know, a wing has three groups. In the meantime, the Americans got to the Elbe River, cutting this group off, and some managed to escape to the south.

I had only two rudimentary groups, and I will tell you something that was typical: when I arrived at the wing to take over, I came by jeep because I had no aircraft.

It was an attack by P Lightnings, and when I finally arrived there were 15 of our aircraft in flames. Rall: Yes, and this marked my entrance into the wing. The next day we were transferred to the south, and from there on we had no solid operations. We had no radar, no air situation.

We had only narrow contact to higher authority in the division, so we relocated to the area south of Munich. Then we gave a final salute, and everyone went on his own. As you can imagine, at that time there was no solid warfare. Even the higher ranks came to my headquarters and asked if they could stay there because they wanted to get through it. You could only get out using your feet in a normal unit.

So this was a very bad time, and there were no firmly planned or controlled missions. The main fight for me was to try and get fuel for the aircraft. Without it we could not fly, naturally. Even if you listened to the fact that wing so and so dissolved at the hands of the Americans, it was because of this situation, that you were alone and on your own.

Were you still expected to intercept and attack bombers? Rall: That was early on, and that time had passed. It did not usually work well.

Now we had normal fighter missions. In February , there were no normal fighter missions left, you know. What we were doing was looking for targets of opportunity. We had no idea where the enemy was at any time.

We were totally in the dark. Rall: I was in the hospital because my left thumb had been shot off, and the wound was still open and I had an infection. I listened in on the higher staff, so this was how I learned about Bodenplatte.

As you know, we lost many of our most experienced unit leaders, irreplaceable losses. A total of 58 unit leaders were lost in that operation, I believe. Rall: At the beginning of the war we flew short-range missions and encountered Spitfires, which were superior.

And do not forget the Hurricanes. I think that the Supermarine Spitfire was the most dangerous to us early on. I flew the Spitfire myself, and it was a very, very good aircraft.

It was maneuverable and with good climbing potential. Then in Russia the first aircraft we encountered were obsolete. The Russians lost about 7, aircraft in the first three to four months of the war, but they learned their lessons well and began building better aircraft—the MiGs, Yaks, and the LaG Developed by Semyon A.

Lavochkin and Mikhail I. Gudkov from their earlier, unsuccessful LaGG-3 with an in-line, water-cooled engine, the LaG-5 came out in and had a big radial engine. It was a powerful, excellent aircraft and served as the basis for even better versions: the La-5FN and the La He also felt that the La-7 was the best Soviet fighter. Rall: Yes, it was excellent. I remember once I chased a Lavochkin a great distance at full throttle and I still could not get him. He was damned fast. Then by way of foreign aid, particularly in the south around the Caucasus where I was fighting, they brought in Spitfires and the Bell P Airacobra, which I liked and the Russians liked but which was inferior to the Bf It had the engine behind the cockpit.

Now the big thing in the Home Defense as far as problems was the P The P was a damned good airplane and it had tremendous endurance, which for us was a new dimension. The P, which as you know shot me down, we knew right away. It had tremendous diving speed and could run up to 1, kilometers per hour, where the Bf was limited to 1, kph.

I learned this quickly when they chased me, and I could do nothing else. The structural layout design of the P was much stronger, yet I consider the P the best battle horse you had of all the fighter escorts. Rall: I was at Ainring near Salzburg when we finished the war.

I walked with my staff, retreating at night, and we went to the Americans, who did not care too much for us. So at daylight we decided to try and go home. At Lake Chiemsee we could not go any farther and were captured. The Americans took me back to Salzburg and put me in prison. They knew my name and they said that all air force officers should report, and they took me very quickly to interrogation. Then seven of us were taken to England. Rall: Yes, and there was a situation that I will never forget.

There was a Mr. Reed, at least that was the name he gave me, his CIC name anyway. I went to England for interrogation. I told him that they were former allies, and I could not do that. Rall: General Steinhoff and Dieter Hrabak were already preparing this. I was in industry and Salem school, where my wife was a doctor, and I was in the organization. The first of January , I was called and I went to Bonn and there I joined the air force again at the rank of major. From there on I underwent the refresher training, at first in Germany, and later we went to train in the Republic F Thunderjet in the United States.

Rall: Oh, yes, it was a beautiful time. Just beautiful. I remember those early days were great. It looked different than it looks today. It was not as extensive as it is today. Phoenix was not as big a city as it is now, and it was beautiful. It was such a beautiful time and all we did was fly, and then I came back. I was appointed to a staff position , and then I became the project officer for the F—you know, the Starfighter— which took me again to the States.

I later became general and division commander. But after calls from his old Luftwaffe friends he volunteered. In January he was called to Bonn and joined the new air force as major. Between and Rall served as head of the West German air force, and then spent a year as German representative on the Nato Military Committee in Brussels. His retirement came suddenly; he went on a three-week private visit to South Africa, where he held conversations with South African politicians about which his minister claimed to know nothing.

The "private" nature of this visit was later hotly contested especially by the weekly magazine Stern. As South Africa, despite its racist regime, was seen as strategically important to Nato it seems likely that was commissioned to go. In retirement, Rall remained interested in aviation and world affairs, travelling abroad to aviation museums. Earlier this year he denounced the Iraq war and said he was glad that Germany was not involved in it.

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Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. Many of these young, inexperienced German pilots were shot down before their 10thsortie. The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded. On May 12, , Rall led his group against an American air raid. His pilots flew two different aircraft.

Some flew Me s with engines equipped with special chargers to allow them to reach altitudes of 8, to 10, meters where they were able to attack the P Mustang and P Thunderbolts that protected Allied bomber units.

Other pilots flew Fw s and attacked the lower-flying U. Rall shot down two Thunderbolts, but then other Ps arrived. Bullets from a.

The glove donated to the Museum is the very glove worn by Rall during that engagement, and it clearly shows the damage from the machine gun round. He was taken to a hospital and his left thumb amputated. Due to the onset of infections he was not able to fly for months. The air battles of that day marked the beginning of a systematic U. The 8th and 9th USAAF with bombers, and accompanying fighters, flew attacks against refineries and production sites for synthetic fuel in the heart of Germany.