Victory
62
Biography
Excerpt - Until the end on our messerschmitt - Adolf Galland
It was in the squadron of the famous Captain Manfred Von Richtofen that Lieutenant Ernst Udet made his debut and obtained 62 victories (he had painted on the rudder of his aircraft the motto "you will not get me" during the first In the interwar period, he organized air shows whose audacity was never equaled and held important roles in several major films on aviation.
The Second World War made him the leader of the German fighter
but he had never been able to stand Goering and Hitler's conceptions revolted him.
The resulting conflicts morally broke this honest and chivalrous man who, after having declared:"It is impossible to live when you can no longer honestly look at yourself in a mirror, had his brains blown out" with a shot of a revolver rather than of endure the Hitlerian yoke longer.
The fall of 1941 brought a whole succession of events as melancholic as the misty landscape with bare trees. On November 17, Berlin radio interrupted its broadcasts to broadcast a statement from the High Command - "This morning the Inspector General of the Luftwaffe, Lieutenant General Ernst Udet, died while personally testing a device of a new type.
By order of Furheur, the great aviator will have a state funeral. "A few weeks earlier, I had met Udet in one of Goring's hunts, the "Forest of Elans", in East Prussia. soon to be confirmed. Udet had not died in an accident. He had ended his life with a bullet from a revolver.
Among young fighter pilots, Udet naturally enjoyed enormous popularity. With his sixty-two aerial victories during the First World War, the glorious pilot was for us both an example, a reliable friend and a magnificent 'Comrade. He combined his exceptional piloting skills with an irresistible charm and the gift of taking life on the bright side. We couldn't help but love him. Between the two wars, he had made exhibitions of aerial acrobatics all over the world, accompanied by expeditions to Africa, aroused the enthusiasm of North and South Americans.
In 1933 he returned to Germany. Hermann Gôring, his comrade in arms and last squadron commander, persuaded him, not without difficulty, moreover, to lend him his assistance in building the Luftwaffe. Udet had an astounding career:hunting inspector in 1935, colonel and head of the technical services of the ministry in 1936, lieutenant-general in 1938 and, in 1939, inspector general of the Luftwaffe, that is to say the man responsible for all air armaments.
It is certain that Udet never aspired to honors and power. Calm and modest, he loved his independence too much. In addition, his human warmth constituted, in the accomplishment of such an enormous task, a heavy handicap:Udet was totally lacking in toughness. In the end, therefore, his efforts were bound to fail; but, in my opinion, this failure was attributable above all to the man who had entrusted him with such a responsibility. When we last met, I found him terribly changed. Udet had lost all the qualities that made him so attractive:his powerful joie de vivre, his humor, his communicative cordiality.
He had become bitter, a bitterness bordering on despair. Already, the unfolding of military events had shown him that the Luftwaffe was headed in the wrong direction. "We need hunters, and more hunters, he kept repeating, thousands of hunters".
Yet it was under his reign that German aircraft production peaked, as far as fighters were concerned, at an absolutely insufficient level:the number of aircraft released per month was far from compensating for the appalling wear and tear on the Eastern front, so much so that it was no longer even necessary to think of regaining air supremacy in the West. Udet certainly foresaw the "Verdun of the air" which was preparing in the immensity of the Soviet sky. But he ended up getting lost in the administrative labyrinth of the High Command, so much so that, on November 17, he finally collapsed.