Rall.photo's
275
Air
Victories
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Major Gunther Rall Gunther
Rall started his operational service with the German Air
Force in 1938 as a leutnant, aged 20. He was still 'in
play' at the close of World War II in 1945, a major
entitled to wear the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves and
Swords. There have been few records like it in the
history of air warfare.
Apart from spells in hospital, including one with a
broken back when he was told he would never fly again, he
served continuously with a combat unit (four years with
JG 52, for a start). During this extraordinary run, he
fought in the Battles of France and Britain in 1940, in
the attack on Crete in 1941 and thereafter in the intense
cold and heat of the Russian front until April 1944, when,
in command, first, ofJG 11 and then, in 1945, JG 300,
with its lethal, long-nosed Fw. 190s, he was back in
business on the Western Front,
battling it out daily with the B-17s, the P-47s and the P-51s
of the United States' Eighth Air Force in the great
daylight offensive against the Third Reich.
During this stretch, he destroyed 275 Allied aircraft (he
had the advantage of plenty of game to shoot at and many
seasons in which to do it), 269 of them against Russia
and six of them over Western Europe and Germany. It was
quite a bag.
Post-war, as a Lieutenant-General, Gunther Rail rose to
be Chief of the Air Staff of the new German Air Force and,
eventually, his country's Military Representative at NATO
headquarters in Brussels.
You can't do much better than that.
JG.52. . . . . . . . . . . . Major
 
Rall
had flown 621 sorties
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