Hermann Graf was born on October 24, 1912 and died on April 11, 1988. He was one of the most famous German fighter pilots and a fighter ace with 212 confirmed kills. Before joining the Luftwaffe, he was a footballer and a glider pilot. He joined the German air force in 1936. Initially, he served as a pilot in a transport unit, but quickly (May 1939) was transferred to fighter aviation - to Jagdgeschwader 51 (JG 51). Interestingly, however, and perhaps surprisingly, he did not take part in the September campaign (1939) or in the French campaign (1940)! Hermann Graf's career as a great fighter pilot began only with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941. By January 1942, he had 45 air victories on the Eastern Front, and by the end of October of the same year this number had increased to 200 kills! For these achievements, Hermann Graf was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. Proclaimed a national hero by Nazi propaganda, he was transferred to the training unit, but at the end of 1943 he returned to active service - he was attached to JG 50, which was to fight the British Mosquito. He survived World War II and, although he surrendered to the US Army, was handed over to the Soviets. He stayed in Soviet captivity until 1949, when he returned to West Germany.
The Luftwaffe is a German air force that began to form in February 1935 under a special order of the Nazi dictator of Germany - Adolf Hitler. The commander of the Luftwaffe - from its very beginning, actually until the end of World War II - was Herman Göring. The quantitative development of the German air force in the period 1935-1939 was rapid, and at that time it was equipped with machines that de facto served until the end of the war, including the Me-109 fighter, the Ju-87 Stukas dive bomber or medium bombers such as the He- 111 or Ju-88. Some German pilots also gained combat experience while serving as part of the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Moreover, even before the war, the Luftwaffe was oriented in such a way as to be able to support the operations of the land forces as effectively as possible. This was reflected in its equipment, structure and organization, as well as in the training of pilots. The German air force successfully emerged from campaigns in Poland, Norway and France, with the Luftwaffe sustaining relatively heavy losses in the latter campaign - both in planes and in personnel. On the other hand, a very painful lesson was the Battle of Britain, during which it had a decisive defeat, losing many more planes, and above all well-trained pilots, than the enemy. It can be added, by the way, that Adolf Galland was one of the best fighter pilots in the Luftwaffe during this battle. In the course of the fighting on the Eastern Front (1941-1945), the German air force, especially at the beginning of the conflict, dominated the quality of aircraft and the training of crews and pilots, which translated into horrendous losses of Soviet aviation and led to even fantastic results of shooting down German fighter aces, such as for example, Hermann Graf or Walter Nowotny. However, in the years 1942-1943 the scales of victory in the air war over Europe began to lean towards the Soviet and - above all - the Allied aviation, which, thanks to machines such as the latest versions of the Spitfire or the P-51 Mustang, caused the German Luftwaffe more and more losses, also in the course of fighting over Germany and in the course of strategic bombing. Even the efforts of the Luftwaffe to make a qualitative leap by introducing jet machines such as the Me-262 or Ar-234 into the line in 1944-1945 did not bring any effect, and the increasingly poorly trained German pilots suffered higher and higher losses in the clash with Allied machines . It is assumed that from the beginning of the war to January 1945, the losses of Luftwaffe personnel amounted to approx. 140,000. people killed and approx. 155 thousand. missing persons.