German Aces

Of all the fronts fought on by the Jagdflieger during World War 2, the Russian, or Eastern, was easily the most lucrative in terms of targets for the experten. Marry an abundance of targets with the Luftwaffe’s best piston-engined fighter of the war – Focke-Wulf’s Fw 190 ‘Butcher Bird’ – and it quickly becomes apparent why so many Jagdflieger achieved kills that passed the 100 victories mark. Flying in variable weather on a battlefront that was constantly changing, the Fw 190 pilots fought virtually to extinction in both the pure fighter and the crucial Schlacht ground attack roles. Aircraft of the Aces 6 and 37 are also available in a single volume as ‘German Aces of the Russian Front’.

The highest scoring aces of any aerial conflict were the Luftwaffe pilots involved in the bloody combats on the Russian Front. The most common fighter used by these pilots was the Bf 109, which was involved in the action from Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, through to the doomed Defence of the Reich in 1945. Units like JGs 5, 52 and 54 all flew the Messerschmitt fighter, progressing from Emil to Gustav variants. This volume includes all the high-scoring aces, and explains just how difficult a job the Jagdwaffe faced on the Russian Front, and how its experts achieved such overwhelming scores. Aircraft of the Aces 6 and 37 are also available in a single volume as ‘German Aces of the Russian Front’.

In 1915 the armies of the Great War were locked in a stalemate of the trenches but a new form of combat would soon put an end to stationary battles - the aerial duel. Almost from its conception air-warfare captured the popular imagination, turning men into heroes, pilots into Fighter Aces. High above the trenches the courage and skill of men such as Baron Von Richthofen, Oswald Boelcke, Edward 'Mick' Mannock, Billy Bishop and Hermann Goering would make them legends in their own lifetime. During the Spanish Civil War a new generation of German Aces won its spurs, with the tactics and machines being perfected for the forthcoming "Blitzkrieg". Throughout the Battle of Britain the hastily trained fighter pilots of the RAF learnt tactics "on the wing" against the Luftwaffe veterans of Spain. The heroisms and determination of the RAF Aces such as Joseph Frantichek and Ginger Lacey were all that stood between Britain and invasion.
In Europe and North Africa the flying skills and tactical genius of men like Werner Moelders, Adolf Galland and Hans Marseilles won the respect of friend and foe alike. On the Eastern Front Erich Hartmann, the Ace of Aces won 352 victories, an astonishing achievement never equalled in the history of aerial combat. This DVD charts the history of aerial combat from the Great War to the dawn of the jet age using rare archive footage, much of which has been unavailable in the West since World War Two.

What was it really like to be a fighter pilot during the Second World War?
Air combat is quick: Each choice must be decisive and executed without hesitation. Mere seconds can decide who will go down in the record books and who will go down in flames. In the high arenas of the Second World War, only a select few pilots ever shot down more than five enemy aircraft and earned the ambitious title of a "Fighter Ace". What made them a breed apart from their fellow fighter pilots? What separated the hunters from the hunted?

Austro-Hungarian industry produced a series of poor fighter types such as the Phönix D I and Hansa-Brandenburg D I during the early stages of the war, and it was not until licence-built examples of the battle-proven Albatros and D II and D III began to reach Fliegerkompagnien, or Fliks, in May 1917 that the fortunes of pilots began to look up.