I FLEW FOR THE FUHRER : The Story of a German Fighter Pilot by Knoke, Hinz

New York 1956, Holt, 5th US printing, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, lacks dust jacket, Good + condition, covers lightly worn and soiled, spine mildly faded, 213 pages. a few illustrations. ................................................ For the vaunted German Luftwaffe, World War 11 was a downward spiral from apparent greatness in Poland to unmitigated disaster on all fronts. I Flew for the Führer records the heights and depths of that epic journey in the incredible career of Heinz Knoke, a gallant and indestructible fighter pilot.Knoke entered front-line service with the famous FiftySecond Fighter Wing in January 1941. For the next four years he tilted against overwhelming Allied strength from German bases throughout Europe. His victims included nineteen four-engine bombers, the toughest targets in the sky................................................................Knoke was innovative and determined; among his more daring exploits was the first air-to-air bombing of U.S. formations. Without any official authorization, Knoke armed his Messerschmitt 109 with a 500-pound bomb, which he dropped into a B-17 formation. One B-17 was destroyed and others were damaged, a triumph that earned him the personal congratulations of Reich Marshal Herman Göring.As German strength declined, there began the usual harassment from Headquarters, trying to extract from the blood of the pilots the resources that poor planning and over-ambitious war aims had squandered. Yet it is in this latter part of the war, when he and his comrades were pitted against hundreds of American fighters, that Knoke's character and ability stand out. His daily sorties saw victories, but also endless defeats; Knoke was shot down many times, but he always came back to fight again, flying obsolete fighters against impossible odds. "The inescapable fact is that on the technical side our performance is inferior in every respect," he writes. "Such successes as are still being achieved in the face of these overwhelming odds are due simply and solely to the excellent morale and fighting spirit of our aircrews. We need more aircraft, better engines-and fewer Headquarters."...............................................................The overextended Luftwaffe kept its pilots in the line until they died. Downed pilots routinely staggered from their parachute harnesses into cockpits to re-enter the fray. Only twentysix days after bailing out of his Messerschmitt and suffering a fractured skull and vertebrae and a variety of other injuries, Knoke hobbled on crutches out to his fighter to accompany his Flight to a new assignment in Holland. He was immediately shot down by intercepting Spitfires.In the end, it was usually only a serious but nonfatal wound that permitted a Luftwaffe pilot to survive. Knoke suffered his in late 1944 at the hands of Czech partisans, when the car in which he was traveling struck a mine. After flying four hundred missions and serving as the youngest Squadron Commander in the German Air Force, he spent the final months of the war on the ground as an Air Liaison Officer, an ardent patriot distressed by a growing awareness of the horrors of the Nazi regime he was defending. Heinz Knoke is officially credited with thirty-three combat victories. The figure of fifty-two victories quoted in the book's foreword arose from a misinterpretation of a wartime document.