Here’s a little story I wrote about Udet a few years back.
The Kaiser’s kindhearted killer
BY BOB ROSENBURGH
One of history’s most famous air aces was Rittmeister Manfred von Richtofen, the notorious Red Baron of World War One. Born into wealth and privilege, Richtofen was a cunning and deliberate professional soldier who led his “Flying Circus” of brightly-colored fighter planes with a stern hand.
But Germany’s second-highest scoring ace of the war, and the top pilot to survive the conflict, was a quiet and unassuming young man named Ernst Udet. Unlike Richtofen, Udet came from common people and started his career as a lowly private, eventually working his way through the ranks. But what he shared with the famous Baron was a natural talent for flying and fierce loyalty to his country. For both men, that meant joining the ranks of a generation gone to war.
Udet had no desire to fight in the trenches, so he managed to get assigned as a motorcycle courier. He’d learned to fly in sailplanes before the war, so he applied for pilot’s training and was delighted to soon find himself transferred to the air service.
But the young private’s career as an aviator could barely get off the ground, as he crashed a training plane shortly after graduation and was arrested. Serving seven days jail time for destruction of property, he returned to his unit to be drummed out and sent back to the motorcycle corps. No sooner did he step onto the airfield than an emergency raid was suddenly called.
Every plane in sight was either in the air or taking off but one. That aircraft belonged to a young officer who couldn’t find his pilot, so when he spotted Udet in an air service uniform, he rushed up and asked him,
“Are you a pilot?” To which the private relied in the affirmative and found himself, happily, ordered into the plane.
Udet knew it was his last flight, because he was being thrown out of the unit, but he decided to get the most from his final moments in the sky. The plane was an old AVG scout two-seater, but he was glad to be “Emil,” slang for the pilot, to the officer “Franz,” nickname for the observer.
Under his guidance, Udet steered the plane towards enemy targets and lined up for bombing runs. The officer dropped bombs, quite accurately he noted, on several buildings, but one bomb hung up on the landing gear in the last run.
Climbing forward to dislodge the bomb, Franz was instead jammed by a leg into a small hatch on the plane’s bottom, so Udet did some erratic maneuvering and worked the bomb loose. After a careful landing, he helped the other flyer out of his predicament and the two had a good laugh.
Later, when Udet reported to the commander for reassignment, instead of the boot, he was given orders to a single-seat fighter command.
“Your new plane will arrive in two days and you can go,” grumbled the captain who had sent him to jail earlier.
But Udet’s luck ran out again. He was issued a newly-constructed Fokker E-1 monoplane, and when he took of for the first time, it simply looped into the ground as soon as it was airborne. Thoroughly frustrated, and with another plane crash on his record, Udet was again surprised when he wasn’t finally washed out for good.
Instead, he was given an older fighter and sent on his way to fighter command anyhow.
And so began his career as a fighter pilot. Private Udet earned the respect of the more experienced flyers by the way he sought their advice and learned the ropes carefully. As he gained skill, he started building a score of aerial victories, soon becoming an ace with five kills, but quickly doubling that and continuing to fly combat missions.
But Udet was a bit different than the other pilots. In his leisure time, after checking his aircraft and guns for the next mission, he’d enjoy bistro parties with his friends. They’d boast of their victories; Udet would talk more about the enemy pilot’s and their courage. A talented artist, Udet would quietly draw caricatures of his friends, the waitresses and others.
He had a lover, too, a young German girl named Lo Trinsk. He’d head home and see her every time he had leave and every plane he flew in the course of the war had “LO!” lettered in white on the side.
Like other German pilots of the day, Udet’s planes sported colorful paint schemes. As the Jastas, or fighter wings, modernized, he flew a series of increasingly more lethal planes, beginning with the Fokker E-1, then an Albatross D-III and a Pfalz D-III, followed by a Fokker DR-1 Triplane, a Fokker D-VII and a hot little Siemens-Schuckert D-III. Each one was mostly bright red.
Udet’s respect for his adversaries knew no bounds, though he did his best to beat them in combat. In one particular incident, he was dogfighting a French Nieuport fighter whom he was unable to keep in his sights. The fight raged all over the sky and neither pilot could tag the other when Udet’s guns jammed.
Struggling to clear them, he saw the French pilot, who could have shot him down just then, come alongside and salute him before speeding away. Telling the tale later, Udet noted the phrase “Vieux Charles” on the Nieuport. He’d been spared by the legendary ace Georges Guynemer!
Many pilots would follow their victims to the ground, then land to tear off a piece of the stricken plane as a souvenir or proof of victory. Udet would do the same, but his mission was to try and save the crew he’d just shot from the sky. On many occasions, he’d call up an ambulance from a nearby phone and stay by until the enemy airmen were under medical care.
When his score reached 20 planes, now-lieutenant Udet was visited by none other than the famous Baron Richtofen, who asked Udet to join his Jasta 11. With the best of Germany’s aces as his colleagues, Udet was able to learn more and more about tactics, flying and leadership. And he learned the secret of their success as a fighter unit.
Instead of flying from a single aerodrome far in the rear echelons, Richtofen kept his pilots and planes close to the front, living in tents and flying from fields. And he kept them moving around to avoid being hit by enemy attack on the ground. That made them more ready for a mission, they were able to stay in the battle longer, and they could fly more often each day.
With such a fast pace of operation, their skills stayed sharp as a razor and Udet quickly racked his score up to 30. But he also suffered from a severe ear infection and was sent home to recuperate. While there, he was awarded the Pour Le Merite, the legendary “Blue Max,” which is Germany’s highest honor. His girl Lo was so excited she parade him around town to show all their friends and Udet, who was a rather short man, felt about ten feet tall.
But the glory was short-lived, for he heard Richtofen was lost in combat. By the time he returned, the unit was commanded by a self-important young officer named Hermann Goering who was capable, but didn’t come near the stature of the great Richtofen.
Udet stayed on with Jasta 11 until he was given command of Jasta 4, were he stayed through the rest of the war. His victory tally eventually reached some 62 enemy aircraft shot down in combat. But Udet saw his score as a measure of duty to the fatherland, not some form of self aggrandizement. In his autobiography, Ace of the Iron Cross, he talks sadly about the fine men he killed in the sky. One incident in particular touched deep in his soul.
Twenty planes fell to his guns in August of 1918, including a French Nieuport 17 he was able to land near when it fell. The pilot was already dead, so Udet collected his personal effects to return to the man’s home. In a breast pocket, he found a newspaper clipping with a picture of himself, Ernst Udet, and an article about the “As de As.” Ace of Aces.
With Richtofen dead, Udet now had the highest score of any living German pilot, but neither that realization nor the body of the slain French aviator brought him solace
But he soldiered on, even when the war seemed already lost. Many victories were the result of simple necessity, like a time when three Jastas landed at a friendly aerodrome, extremely low on fuel, and asked for enough gas to get home. While they were arguing with the local commander who wouldn’t give up any gas, a flight of British SE-5 fighters swarmed in and attacked the grounded Flying Circus.
Udet, however, was quickly airborne and shot one down, then drove the other two away. Even as he turned to land, his engine died, out of fuel, and it was a deadstick touchdown with dry tanks. They got their fuel and headed home.
Besides his score of air victories, Ernst Udet is also credited with the first tank killed by an aircraft. Right before the end of the war, as British tanks were advancing on his airfield, Udet’s Jasta joined the fight against the attack and he was able to hit a tank with enough machinegun fire to effectively destroy it.
His last two kills were part of flight of four De Havilland D-H-9s that attacked his base September 26. Udet was wounded in the battle, shot through the left cheek and one thigh, and was still convalescing when the Armistice was signed November 11.