Stuka-Pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel

Hans-Ulrich Rudel was called "the Eagle of the Eastern Front". This pastor's son from Silesia, born in 1916, Colonel and last Commodore of the successful Stuka squadron "Immelmann", was the only soldier in World War II to receive the highest German decoration for bravery. The Golden Oak Leaves with Swords and Jewels to the Knight's cross recognized his unique number of superlative achievements. With 2530 combat missions and his total of successes, unbeaten in all times and nations, he stands far in the front of the world's renowned aerial aces.

In low-level attacks, often in the heaviest defensive fire, in his slow ''cannon-bird'' destroyed 519 soviet tanks-seventeen of them on a single day! On the list of scores achieved by this stuka combat pilot, who became a living legend to the soldiers on the Eastern Front, there stood at war's end, among others, one battleship, one cruiser, 1 destroyer, 70 landing craft and nine attested aircraft, plus hundreds of motor vehicles, numerous artillery, antitank and anti-aircraft positions, as well as armored convoys and bridges. Twelve comrades-six stuka crews were saved by him from capture or death. When he tried to rescue another crash-landed crew from Russian territory in 1944, he was taken prisoner, fled with a bullet in his shoulder, covered some 50 kilometers through the soviet hinterlands, and reached the German lines again. Shortly after this audacious, exhausting flight, the wounded man was fling in combat again.

Shot more then thirty times by ground fire -- but never once by a fighter plan --, wounded five times, the fervent sportsman took a direct anti-aircraft hit on the Oder front and lost his right leg. Just six weeks later the ''Bravest of the Brave'', as the soldiers also called him, was flying again despite being forbidden to, often with the stump of his leg bleeding, and was on active duty until the last day of war.

"Rudel alone takes the place of a whole division!" said Field Marshal Ferdinand Schoerner. Stalin honored the achievements of the "Eagle of the Eastern Front" by putting a price of 100,000 rubies on his head. A highly decorated, battle-scarred Russian officer evaluated the achievements of his onetime enemy with the words: "Rudel is the greatest pilot known to history!" And Pierre Clostermann, France's most successful fighter pilot, bearer of the highest French and British medals for bravery, wrote in the foreword to this monumental documentary volume: "What a shame that he was not wearing our uniform!"

"Rudel is the greatest pilot known to history!"
What a shame that he was not wearing our uniform!"

Colonel Rudel, a successful sportsman even before the war, was able to achieve countless sporting victories after the war, despite an artificial leg, and against healthier competitors. He gained international recognition as an alpinist too. The high point of these achievements was his being first to climb the 6920-meter Llullay-Yacu peak in the Andes, the world's highest volcano.

With an iron will, Rudel, working as an advisor to industry, overcame the worst effects of a stroke that he, who opposed nicotine and alcohol, suffered during skiing training in 1970 -- true to the fighting slogan that he make his own in hopeless situations during the war: You are only lost if you give up on yourself!"

"You are only lost if you give up on yourself!"

600 PICTURES AND 100 DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARIES