Saluting the Count: Krupinski Biography

[Kurt Braatz]

More crash landings, bail-outs and injuries than aerial victories, an easy-going daredevil both in combat and on the ground – Johannes Steinhoff, his first front-line commander, considered Walter Krupinski a hopeless case til, under Günther Rall, he turned to be one of Germany’s outstanding fighter leaders. “All I needed to succeed as a youngster, I’ve learned from this man”, said Erich Hartmann about his 23 year old superior. After three years in the east, Krupinski fought over the Reich and northern France. Side by side with Adolf Galland, he scored the last of his 197 kills flying the Me 262 out of München-Riem.

From 1946, Krupinski worked for the CIA to establish postwar Germany’s own secret service. Being retrained as a fighter pilot by the Royal Air Force, he became one of the key figures in forging the new Luftwaffe. Krupinski was the first German to test-fly and recommend the F-104, and the first to lead a German fighter-bomber wing equipped with nucelar weapons at the height of the cold war. Being appointed the armed force’s youngest General in 1966, he rose to deputy air chief. Adored by his men in war and peacetime, he was feared for his uncompromising and challenging clarity on the carpet floors of the Ministry of Defence until his dismissal in 1976. He died in 2000.

Now here is his biography: Walter Krupinski – Jagdflieger, Geheimagent, General. From Stalingrad, the Normandy beaches and the balls-out flying of the 50s and 60s to the previously undisclosed, nightmarish details of nuclear warfare, it reflects a life packed with drama, hardships, glory and passion. More on www.neunundzwanzigsechs.de

Cheers,
Kurt