Horst Ramstetter (RKT) - looking for info

[Recceswind]

Hello,

Does anyone have any information about Horst Ramstetter - German Hs 123 and Fw 190 pilot, RKT. As far as I know, he was born in 1919 and it is possible, that he is still alive.

Thanks in advance!
R

[Doug Stankey]

We do not have him in our officer database and a check of Rk holders comes up empty. However a check of the Kracker database reveals:

Rammstetter, Horst. Uffz. - I./Sch.G-1Fw 190A-5/U3DK-G(4/12/43), EK 1 & 2, Assault Operational ClaspDK-G Awards List.

This it appears that e existed but as a Feldwebel and not an RKT. That's about all we can find.

HLdZ
DGS

[Recceswind]

Thanks!

I have an additional info:
- between 1941 and 1943 he was a Hs 123 pilot (Russia, I./Sch.G. 1)
- in July 1943 he was a Feldwebel,
- in November 1943 he started to serve with I./SG 101
- in May 1944 he was a Ofhr.
- on the beginning of 1945 he was probably serving with SG 1

I am sure that he survived the war.

[Matti Salonen]

1942-09-11, Stab Schl.G 1, Fi 156, 5576, Bei Stalingrad, Unfreiwillige Bodenberührung infolge Schlechtwetter. Bruch 50 %.
F Uffz Ramstetter, Horst
Flouggast Oberarzt Dieffenbach, verletyt

Matti

[Recceswind]

Thanks Matti!

Any additional details - especially contact info to H. Ramstetter (if he is still alive...) or to his family would be appreciated.

[Recceswind]

Ken (user lllMUKlll) please contact me once more via PM. It looks like that your profile has been deleted. I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Hello my Grandpa is Horst Ramstetter... He died in 2015...in Hamburg Germany.

[dtaylorxx]

In the last weeks of November of 1942 Horst Ramstetter was a Luftwaffe pilot flying with Stab (Schlacht) SG.1 At this time he was flying either a Henschel 123 and/or the fighter bomber version of the FW-190 out of Pitomnik, the closest airfield due west of Stalingrad. He was one of the first German pilots to discover that the Russians had broken through the German/Romanian defenses at Stalingrad, prior to the encirclement. He recalled his experiences in a post war interview:

"Romanian troops, our Allies...were positioned to the north of Stalingrad. Two of us flew a mission over the area. We were supposed to find out what was going on because the front line was a bit confused. I looked down and saw these greyish-brown uniforms. The Romanians, I thought, and decided to check it out...I dived down, but I was fired at. I said, ‘Those crazy Romanians, why are they firing at us, we’re (allies)...’ It wasn’t the Romanians, it was the Russians - but what were they doing there? I immediately flew back to base at Pitomnik and reported: 'the Russians have broken through'. Where? I showed them where on the map. ‘That’s impossible!’ they said ‘That’s where the Romanians are!' 'Yes, exactly there', I said. And once the reconnaissance had flown over and confirmed my report, we prepared the airstrip ready for defense. We knew if the Russians kept advancing like that, that they’d be on top of us in a day. We had nothing, no infantry, nothing. We had already been forced to evacuate our airfield, because the Russians were too near. Now, they were coming close again and all we could do was sit in the trenches and wait until they arrived. We lay there all night and at first light, at dawn, we climbed into the planes and flew up over the airstrip. The Russians were already there, and they fired on us. We flew fifteen or sixteen missions. We were reloaded with ammunition and bombs whilst the engines were still running and then we had to take off again.’

Ramstetter's flying duties were not limited to ground attack missions. Earlier on the 9th of November while assigned to the Stabstaffel of Schl.G. 1, Ramstetter was flying a Fi 156 'Storch' at low level in bad weather when he inadvertently struck a ground obstacle, causing it to crash. His passenger Oberarzt Dieffenbach was injured. Ramstetter explained why he was flying a light liason aircraft like the Storch over the battle zone: "We carried many injured men, picked them up directly from the medical stations near the front lines, we flew very close to the front, but at low level. We were often able to avoid the flak because we knew roughly where the flak batteries were. But over Stalingrad we used to fly very low because the light flak, which was operated by women, was very accurate and low flying meant they couldn’t track us so easily..."

By December 1942, Horst Ramstetter’s squadron was transferred to Nichechieskaya, south of Stalingrad. During a fighter-bomber mission around this time he was shot down by Russian Flak over the target: "The heavy flak was quite a different matter. The Russians had set up their flak, and before you got to Stalingrad, you saw what looked like a wall of fire. Shells detonated, it looked like darker and lighter balls of cotton wool. And we had to fly into them! There wasn’t time to be afraid because we were so preoccupied with keeping our planes in the air... (whenever) I returned to base, I felt I had just been dragged across an obstacle course. We didn’t have much respite, though. We were soon in the air again, to reconnoitre the Russian troops’ supplies..." On one such mission, disaster nearly overtook Ramstetter.

"I was flying an FW-190, and discovered a Russian train loaded with war material. We attacked and destroyed the engine, but my aircraft received a massive hit and I had to make an emergency landing. I came down behind the Russian lines. We carried emergency rations of a bar of choco-cola and weather proof matches and Dextrose. We had the machine gun on board the plane and were carrying our own hand guns. I got out of the plane, saw a corn field and ran into it. I heard the troops rolling past somewhere in the distance and I said to myself: ‘If the Russians should come now, you’ve got seven or eight rounds in your gun. You can try to get the Ivans with seven of them and the last one you’ve got left will be for yourself.’ But I thought again and said: ‘Nothing doing! I’m not going to kill myself...I had my compass with me and knew in which direction I had to go. I set off, always keeping myself hidden. On the second night, I arrived at a German border position on the front line. I swam across a river and ran across a field and shouted, ‘Don’t shoot! I’m a German pilot!’ But just as I reached the position safely, a Russian fighter-bomber appeared and dived down on us. Everyone threw themselves to the ground and some men jumped on top of me. They saved my life. They were hit by shrapnel, but I survived, but I thought, I’d rather volunteer for 100 combat missions than go through another day like this..."

Ramstetter survived the war (passing away in 2015 in Hamburg) but remembered his experience at Stalingrad as one of the most difficult of his wartime years: "Undoubtedly, the most difficult mission was Stalingrad, because the concentration of defenses was so enormous, more than at any time from beginning to the end of the Russian campaign. For me at any rate, it was an enormous effort to reach the various points that had been chosen as targets there, fly there and do the job...When our advance on Stalingrad began, everyone said, great, we’re moving, marching, everything’s fine. Then they realized too late that the Russians had no intention of losing it. To them, Stalingrad was a sort of ‘show town’, an object of prestige. Some of the pilots were only eighteen and had never flown a mission. They’d had their heads filled with ‘Führer, Volk and Vaterland - we’ll storm onwards, we heroes will win the war!’. But the real thing was very different. They came back crying their eyes out. They were exhausted, they hadn’t been prepared for such an operation, or for an enemy as ferocious as the Russians. The raw reality pulled them back down to the earth."

Reference: https://erenow.org/ww/voices-from-th...-machine/4.php