Bomber pilots.

[krichter33]

Thanks for the reply. I have the Brutting and most of the Schumann books... Just trying to cover as much as I can. There seems to be enough info about Kampfflieger, Stukaflieger, and Schlachtflieger. The real problem is finding info on the Transport and Recon RK winners.

[Larry deZeng]

Hi Klaus -

The two books listed below will give you a list of all the Nahaufklärungsflieger and Fernaufklärungsflieger who were Ritterkreuzträger. There were 52 of the former and 66 of the latter. As for the Transportflieger, lot’s of luck. There were very few Ritterkreuz awardees from this branch, perhaps 5 to 10 at most.

Nowarra, Heinz J. Nahaufklärer 1910-1945: Die Augen des Heeres (Motorbuch Verlag: Stuttgart, 1981).
Nowarra, Heinz J. Fernaufklärer 1915-1945: Entstehung, Entwicklung, Einsatz (Motorbuch Verlag: Stuttgart, 1982).

L.

[Andy Mitchell]

For the Transport units look to Transporter v1 from Martin Pegg part of the Luftwaffe Colours/Classic Colours series from Classic/Ian Allan.

page 64 will give you a list of 43 RK holders for the Transport Units for the period 1940 to 1945.


If you are interested in DKiG holders then please refer to the datafile that can be downloaded from the Luftwaffedata Wiki

[leonventer]

Hi Klaus,

The best resource on Transportflieger is this book:

• "Die deutschen Transportflieger im Zweiten Weltkrieg" by Fritz Morzik and Gerhard Hümmelchen, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1966, 320 pages

The book covers organization and aircraft (20%) and transport operations in all theaters (80%.) It lists forty Transportflieger Ritterkreuzträger, the first being awarded on May 11 1940 and the last on Feb 28 1945.

Hope that helps,
Leon Venter

[Larry deZeng]

40, 43, hmmm........

I wonder if maybe some of those listed were assigned to a Transport unit at the time the award was bestowed, but were actually getting it for a large number of Feindflüge flown while serving in bomber units? There was considerable assigning back and forth of personnel between the Kampfflieger, C- and BF-Schulen and Transportflieger branches, with bomber crews often being moved to transports after accumulating a hefty number of combat missions. These happened especially during 1943-44 when the Kampfflieger were in decline and the other branches were in their ascendancy. What they held in common was the multi-engine "B" license with bad weather and instrument training and this made them interchangeable to a large extent. There are lot's of examples of this in the records. A minor point, but possibly worth a thought.

L.