Hans-Ulrich Rudel on 8th (not 9th) February 1945 - what is known about the mission in which he lost his leg?

[Dan History]

On 8 February 1945, the very famous ground-attack pilot, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, was shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft fire on the Oder river front, near a town called Lebus. Rudel was gravely wounded, and had a leg amputated.

In his memoirs, Rudel mis-stated the date, as 9 February. Writing soon after the end of the war, he clearly did not have access to surviving archival material, and his account is not necessarily reliable. What I am interested in here is whether information is available from German primary sources about Rudel's mission. Memoirs tend to be flawed sources, so it would be good if some primary source information is available. Sadly, the surviving documents of Luftflotte 6, at least those which I have read, contain essentially no detail, as follows:

"Oberst Rudel S.G. 2 schwerverwundet, (Beinamputation)"

On the same day, 8 Feburary, the following milestones are noted:

"10.(Pz.)/S.G. 9 4000. Feindflug seit Aufstellung

Fw. Matthes 1.(Pz.)/S.G. 9 60. Panzerabschuß"

Everyone is welcome to either reply here, or contact me by private message.

Regards,

Dan


P.S. On 21 November 2018, almost six years ago, forum member Andrey Kuznetsov published an article about this incident, with the polemical title, "Thirteen tanks for one leg?". See the text at web.archive.org/web/20240814131129/...warspot.ru/13416-trinadtsat-tankov-za-odnu-nogu The majority of forum members do not read Russian, of course, so please use Google Translate, at translate.google.co.uk/ , in case of interest.


The article is far from wholly credible, its main purpose is clearly to question the credibility of Rudel's memoirs. The author suggests that Rudel's Ju 87 was most probably hit by Soviet 12.7 mm DShK machine guns, not 37 mm cannon, and that Rudel destroyed at most one Soviet tank and damaged another two, instead of the 13 he claimed to have destroyed that day. Kuznetsov's claims make it all the more interesting to see what German sources might have to say, if they have survived.