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Heinz Knoke

J

JDO3

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Anyone know of this ace?
Credited with 52 kills. I read his memoirs 'I flew for the Fuhrer' and only found 36 kills.
Any thoughts on that one?
 
Could it be some kills were shared with other Luftwaffe pilots?

He's on youtube, search for the short film: I flew for the Fuhrer parts one and two. Its pretty amazing he actually survived the war.
 
I believe they had no shared kills in the Luftwaffe. Somebody decided who got the credit and that was probably the one who immediately caused the crash.

Knoke became a politician, who was quite active in Niedersachsen (a State in the new West-German Republic), and a manager of a still well known brewery.

There were a few other German aces, who survived the war, some of them joining the new Luftwaffe (Hartmann, Barkhorn, Bartz) and even becoming NATO Generals (Rall, Steinhoff, Krupinski). Galland went abroad as an advisor for the Argentinian airforce.

After early retirement (because he disagreed with the Ministry's decisions on what new fighter aircraft should be used), Hartmann worked among other things as a flight instructor at an airfield not far away from where I grew up. I could have taken lessons from him, but unfortunately I did not know by then.
 
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