His rear gunner drowned trying to swim the Dniester River, but Rudel made the crossing and was the only member of the group to eventually reach safety. With Soviet soldiers in hot pursuit, the German aviators took to their heels. Although he was able to pick up his squadron mates, the plane was unable to take off because of the muddy conditions.

The commander saw that the crew was unhurt and landed to attempt a rescue. This required a maneuver that usually found the Stukas flying in the direction of their own lines, actually helping some damaged planes return safely to their airfields.ĭuring a raid in March 1944, a Stuka of Rudel’s squadron was shot down by Soviet fighters. He determined that the most effective method of attack was from behind, hitting a tank near the engine where armor protection was thinnest. Rudel developed specialized tactics for employment against enemy tanks and once destroyed 12 of them in a single day. It was reported that Soviet Premier Josef Stalin was so vexed by Rudel’s exploits that he placed a bounty of 100,000 rubles on the pilot’s head. He flew 2,530 combat sorties, 400 of them in the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter in which he scored 11 aerial victories. He destroyed 1,000 vehicles, 150 artillery pieces, and an incredible 519 tanks. During the war, he rose to the rank of colonel and was also credited with sinking two Soviet cruisers, a destroyer, and 70 landing craft. His 2,000-pound bomb struck the battleship Marat, detonating an ammunition magazine. On September 23, 1941, Rudel took part in a raid against the Soviet Navy’s Baltic Fleet at Kronstadt. When war broke out, he was flying reconnaissance missions, but he was allowed to transfer to dive-bomber training in the spring of 1940.

By the time the cannon-equipped Stuka was introduced, Rudel was already a national hero in Germany. In the hands of a skilled pilot, the Ju-87G was indeed deadly, and for Red Army tankers the deadliest man in the Luftwaffe was Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Introduced in the spring of 1943, the tank-busting Ju-87G became a spectacular success on the Eastern Front.

One of the most effective weapons of the war against armored formations was the Ju-87G, a variant of the original Stuka armed with a pair of 37mm Rheinmetall-Borsig cannon, one under each wing. Interestingly, the Stuka rendered what was perhaps its most valuable service to the Third Reich later in the war when a resurgent Red Army was threatening the Fatherland itself. Its sinister, gull-winged profile became a symbol of the Nazi blitzkrieg.Īlthough the Stuka’s shortcomings were painfully exposed under the guns of Royal Air Force fighters during the Battle of Britain, it continued to serve on all fronts where the Luftwaffe was engaged. Its sirens screamed in the skies over Warsaw and Rotterdam. The Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber proved itself an effective weapon of terror during the Spanish Civil War as part of Hitler’s Condor Legion.

Stuka pilot by hans ulrich rudel