From the time the Luftwaffe went to war on September 1, 1939, its fighter pilots immediately began to make their presence known. Slashing through the skies and inflicting enormous casualties, they amassed previously unimaginable scores of aerial victories. Very few of the great pilots survived the war, yet the fact that Germany’s three leading aces did is testimony to their skill, determination and luck.

Günther Rall served on the Eastern and Western fronts, rising to the rank of major and commanding fighter groups and entire squadrons. He finished World War II as the third-highest-scoring fighter ace of all time with 275 aerial victories. His final assignment was in the defense of the Reich itself, and his capture by the Americans was the beginning of a second career for him.

Continuing to rise in the Bundesluftwaffe (the new Luftwaffe), he trained in the United States and later commanded German jet fighter units in the 1960s. He is still good friends with many of his old Luftwaffe comrades, and he was reunited with many for the 80th birthday celebration for General Johannes Steinhoff on September 15, 1993, shortly before Steinhoff’s death.

After retiring from the new German Air Force, General Rall began working in an advisory capacity for several well-known companies. Today he enjoys retirement, his family and his many grandchildren, and enjoys corresponding with historians.

World War II: General, please tell us about your background.

Rall: I was born on March 10, 1918, in Gaggenau, which is a small village in the Black Forest. My father was a merchant, and when I was born he was on operations during World War I. He first saw me when he came back.

WWII: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

Rall: I have a sister who is still alive and lives in Stuttgart, which I consider my hometown. My family moved there when I was 3 years old, and I was brought up and educated in Stuttgart. I was in elementary school and high school, which we called Gymnasium, where I was educated for nine years in Latin and five years in the old Greek, with the education focused more on literature and such, not so much on science or mathematics. I took the final exam, which we call the Abitur. I graduated at the age of 18 and became a cadet in an infantry regiment.

WWII: Didn’t you originally join the infantry and then decide that running in the mud wasn’t for you?

Rall: Yes. And later I decided to become an air force officer.

WWII: When did you begin flying in the Luftwaffe?

Rall: I started flying as a senior cadet in the air force, and I went through to the final exam for promotion to Leutnant. In those days the air force did not have the capacity to train all of its own cadets. And we took cadets from the navy and the army. I went to the air force and started flying in 1938 in Neubiberg, which is a suburb of Munich.

WWII: When was your first taste of combat?

Rall: This was at the age of 21. In 1939 I finally graduated training as a fighter pilot on a base east of Berlin and was transferred to Jagdgeschwader (fighter wing) JG-52. At the beginning of the war I was with this wing, and my first contact with the enemy was in May 1940. This was over France.

WWII: After the French capitulated, you served on the Channel Front, did you not?

Rall: Yes, we modified our airplanes for flying over sea–you know, with our dinghies in our planes. I was located near Calais. There we opposed the Royal Air Force on the other side and flew missions over the English Channel to the southern part of the British island. We were attacking convoys and things like that. Flights were short because of fuel; we could not fly any farther.

WWII: Did the British pilots and officers fight well?

Rall: Outstanding. They were a well trained and highly motivated force, with good equipment and good morale.

WWII: A mirror image of your Luftwaffe at that time?

Rall: Oh, yes, and I was in a wing which at that time was not very experienced, as it was a newly formed wing. We learned our lessons over the British Channel, and we had tremendous losses against the Royal Air Force. I had the highest respect for them.

WWII: Were most of your losses during fighter missions or bomber escort missions?

Rall: We had unfortunately been assigned to escort Junkers Ju-87B Stukas (dive bombers), very slow-flying aircraft. We had to fly close escort (in Messerschmitt Bf-109Es), which was wrong. We had to stick with them, giving up all of our superiority and speed. So we escorted them over the Channel where the Spitfires and Hurricanes waited upstairs for us, and we had tremendous losses. I lost my group commander. The adjutant and all three squadron commanders were killed in a time span of about two weeks. I, as a young lieutenant, had to take over my 8th Staffel (squadron) as commander at the age of 22. I did this for three years.

WWII: I suppose that all of this combat experience trained you and prepared you for when you were later transferred to Russia?

Rall: Yes, that is correct.

WWII: In what other areas did you serve during the war?

Rall: Well, we were withdrawn to Germany, where we trained new pilots, and then went to Romania. We were to protect the oil fields and the bridges over the Danube River down to Bulgaria. We were stationed near Bucharest, the capital of Romania. This was for only a short time, from December 1940 to March 1941. When we moved into Bulgaria, Greece was beginning. I also had operations over Crete in May 1941. I came back with the group from Romania when Crete was finished, and we were given a new airplane, the Messerschmitt Bf-109F, which was a much better aircraft. It had round wingtips and a new Daimler Benz engine, the 603. At that point–June 1941–the war with Russia was just beginning. From then until 1944 I was in the southern part of Russia, moving down to the Caucasus and on to Dnepropetrovsk, Stalingrad, all of the important names. This was a very fast-moving war, contrary to the northern part of the Russian Front, which was more stationary. In the spring I came back to Germany to the Home Defense (Reichs Verteidigung), flying against the Eighth Air Force, as you know, against all the North American P-51 Mustang, Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.

WWII: Describe the crash in which you injured your back.

Rall: This was November 28, 1941. I was flying between Taganrog and Rostov. In those days it was very cold. We had temperatures of minus 40 degrees Centigrade. I flew an afternoon mission, what we would today call a fighter sweep, when my wingman and I ran into Russians. It had just started getting dark, and I had a dogfight with a Russian, shooting him down in flames. In this very late light, I was blinded a little bit. I didn’t pay attention, and a Russian came in behind me. He shot my engine dead and it was over Russian territory, so certainly I moved and turned trying to reach the German lines– not a solid line, but I saw some German tanks. I was flying westward, and I tried to make a belly landing, but I saw where I was going to touch down, in what they call a baikal. This was a little canyon just across my flight direction, and I touched the ground at too high a speed. The aircraft hit and jumped up again. I bounced over a little canyon and pushed my stick forward. I bellied in and crashed on the other side. That was the last I knew, as I saw this wall coming against me, and in the big bang I was knocked out. The rest of the story I learned from my wingman, as he was circling over me and watching what happened. When the battle and crash were over, my wings came off, my engine came off, and thank God these things came off so I didn’t catch fire. I was hanging in the wreckage and nearby was a German tank. The crew jumped out and cut me out of the cockpit. I was unconscious and I didn’t know how I got out. Later that night I ended up in a burned-out school in Taganrog. This was a kind of aid station for the ambulance, and there was no medical treatment there.

WWII: You were very lucky.

Rall: Yes, I was lucky. In the crash I broke my back in three places–the eighth and ninth thoracic vertebrae and the fifth lumbar vertebra. I was paralyzed for a long time on the right side and my right leg.

WWII: How many times were you wounded during the war?

Rall: I was wounded three times, but I was shot down about eight times. I bellied in between the front lines, I jumped out and was picked up by Germans in tanks and so on. I was always lucky, except I was seriously wounded three times. The first time it was my back. I was then shot and hit right in the face and in my hand, and the third time I jumped out and a P-47 Thunderbolt shot my left thumb off.

WWII: You met your wife, Hertha, while in the hospital.

Rall: Yes. She was a medical doctor, and we met after the crash in Russia. I was evacuated in due time and was back in Romania. We were moving back in retreat, and there were no X-ray stations; it was just chaos. In Romania, I was X-rayed and the doctor told me, ‘Flying? You can forget it!’ because my back was broken in three places. I got a full body cast, an extension cast, and when this was fixed after one week, I was transferred on a train, which took eight days to go through Romania and the Carpathian Mountains. We ended up in Vienna, and at night we came to the train station. The doctors came and I had everything written on my chest as to what had happened to me. They took me to the hospital and the next morning Hertha was the doctor who saw me, and afterward she became my wife.

WWII: What types of aircraft did you fly?

Rall: I flew the Messerschmitt Bf-109 in all of the different marks (variants), the E, F, G and the K model, and of course the Focke-Wulf Fw-190, but I liked the 109 most because I was familiar with it. Certainly I flew the 190, but only the D model long-nosed version, toward the end of the war in some missions.

WWII: How would you compare your aircraft with Allied fighters?

Rall: When I was injured, I became the commander of the German Fighter Leader School for about four months or so. At that time we had formed a squadron with captured enemy aircraft, and we flew them–the P-38, P-47, P-51, as well as some Spitfires. My left hand was still in bandages, but I was flying all of these aircraft, as I was very eager to learn about and evaluate them. I had a very good impression of the P-51 Mustang, where the big difference was the engine. When we received these aircraft we flew about 300 hours in them. You see, we did not know anything about how they flew, their characteristics or anything before that. In the P-51 there was no oil leak, and that was just fantastic. This was one of the things that impressed me, but I was also very interested in the electrical starting switches, which we did not have. This made it very difficult in starting our engines in the Russian winter. We had the inertia starter. The cockpits of all of these enemy aircraft were much more comfortable. You could not fly the Bf-109 for seven hours; the cockpit was too tight, too narrow. The P-51 (cockpit) was for me a great room, just fantastic. The P-38 with two engines was great, but I think the best airplane was the P-51. Certainly the Spitfire was excellent, but it didn’t have the endurance of the P-51. I think this was the decisive factor. They flew for seven hours, and we flew for one hour and 20 minutes.

WWII: That makes quite a difference in aerial combat.

Rall: Yes, you would have to get down because you were short on fuel, then look for the nearest air base, and they still had fuel for three hours more.

WWII: With all of your experience, which of the commanders was the best fighter leader you served with, as far as taking care of the fliers and the missions?

Rall: I can tell you that all the characters you may name are and were good friends of mine, such as Johannes Steinhoff, Adolf Galland, Hannes Trautloft, Werner Mölders and Dieter Hrabak. As Hrabak was my wing leader at one time, and he is one of my closest friends now, I respect him as a fighter leader and as a person. In the war I served in the JG-52 exclusively on the Eastern Front.

WWII: Werner Mölders was also a respected man during the Spanish Civil War.

Rall: Absolutely, he was a great character and fighter leader, and he was a very strong Catholic. In those days he had his own rules and personality. He was a great man, creating new tactics, leading his men into combat, and being concerned for them and caring for them in the air as well as on the ground. This was, I think, the real Werner Mölders. Despite his young age, he was known as ‘Daddy Mölders.’ It was because of his experience and leadership that he was given the nickname.

WWII: What are your personal feelings about Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring? Is it true that most of the pilots did not like him?

Rall: You could not like him. He was perhaps a capable man before the war. He was a great organizer, helping to build the air force after the First World War. Also, he was a great fighter pilot in World War I. As you also know, he was injured in 1923, and he had a very difficult injury. He had to take morphine for the pain and became addicted. It might have changed his character. At the time I became acquainted with him, I was cold to him. He was a big fat man, a very pompous man, and not only I but my comrades felt that he was out of touch with reality. He was certainly not respected as an air force leader. Actually he did not lead the air force at all; it was somebody else, but not Göring. Hermann Göring would make silly statements to Hitler. Hitler said, ‘You are the leader of the air force,’ and he (Göring) made a long statement about the Battle of Britain, you know, that he would triumph over the Royal Air Force, which was wrong, as we had tremendous losses in our fighter fleet that we never recovered from during the war. He said, ‘We can support Stalingrad, the air force can do it,’ which he was not able to do, which was a very wrong and costly statement.

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