{"id":23686641,"date":"2026-09-20T16:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T14:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/erich-rudorffer-13-claims-17-minutes\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T16:55:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T14:55:43","slug":"erich-rudorffer-13-claims-17-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/erich-rudorffer-13-claims-17-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirteen Claims in Seventeen Minutes: The Arithmetic of Erich Rudorffer"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<p>On 6 November 1943, over the Soviet counter-offensive that became the Battle of Kiev, a German fighter pilot logged thirteen aerial victories between 13:00 and 13:17. Eight Yak-7s and five Yak-9s. Seventeen minutes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The pilot was Erich Rudorffer, and that afternoon took his running total to 122. He would finish the war somewhere north of 200, fly more than 1,000 combat missions, be shot down sixteen times, take to his parachute nine times, and then live long enough to become the last surviving holder of the Knight\u2019s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, dying in 2016 at 98.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Numbers like that need handling with care. They come out of a wartime claim system run by a regime with an enormous appetite for heroes, on a front where German fighter units flew against a vast, often inexperienced opponent, and where nobody was going back to count wreckage. The honest version of Rudorffer\u2019s story is not a scoreboard. It is a case study in what those scoreboards are and are not.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f7fa;border:1px solid #dfe5ee;padding:18px 22px;margin:28px 0\">\r\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#222;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p>\r\n<ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:20px;color:#333;line-height:1.7\">\r\n<li><strong>Born:<\/strong> 1 November 1917, Zwochau, Saxony. <strong>Died:<\/strong> 8 April 2016, Bad Schwartau, aged 98<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Units:<\/strong> JG 2 \u201cRichthofen\u201d, JG 54, and JG 7 \u201cNowotny\u201d, the first operational jet fighter wing in the world<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Claims:<\/strong> counts vary. Spick lists 222, Zabecki 224, Morgan and Weal 220; Mathews and Foreman found German Federal Archives records for 219 confirmed plus two unconfirmed<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Missions:<\/strong> more than 1,000, with aerial combat on over 300 occasions<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Shot down:<\/strong> sixteen times by flak and fighters; parachuted nine times<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>First victory:<\/strong> 14 May 1940, a Curtiss Hawk 75 over France<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The big days:<\/strong> eight in 32 minutes over Tunisia on 9 February 1943; thirteen in 17 minutes over the Eastern Front on 6 November 1943; eleven on 28 October 1944<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Jet claims:<\/strong> ten to twelve on the Me 262, depending on the source, seven of them in April 1945<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Afterwards:<\/strong> airline pilot on DC-2s and DC-3s in Australia, then Pan Am and the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The mechanic who wanted to be a fighter pilot<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Rudorffer did not arrive in a cockpit by the usual route. He trained as an automobile metalsmith specialising in coachbuilding, joined the Luftwaffe in April 1936 with a flier replacement unit, and then spent two and a half years as an aircraft engine mechanic and ground tradesman before anyone let him fly. He was sent for flight training at Liegnitz in 1938, first as a bomber pilot and then as a Zerst\u00f6rer, a heavy fighter pilot.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The transfer to single-seat fighters came on 1 October 1939. After conversion at the fighter school at Schlei\u00dfheim and a spell at the supplementary training units at D\u00f6beritz and Merseburg, he joined 2. Staffel of Jagdgeschwader 2 \u201cRichthofen\u201d in January 1940 as an Oberfeldwebel, based at Frankfurt-Rebstock.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>His own later account of why he wanted fighters is unglamorous and entirely believable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/erich-rudorffer-portrait-bundeswehr-military-history-museum-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Painted wartime portrait of Erich Rudorffer on display at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A wartime propaganda portrait of Rudorffer, now hung at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden. The museum notes it was confiscated by the US Army after the war as propaganda art. Photo: MisterBee1966 \/ CC BY-SA 3.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">France, Britain, and the Channel years<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>On 10 May 1940 I. Gruppe of JG 2 moved to Kirchberg to support Army Group A through the Ardennes, and four days later, ordered to protect the Maas bridges near Sedan, Rudorffer shot down a Curtiss Hawk 75. By the armistice of 22 June he had nine. He flew through the Battle of Britain, and one story that has followed him ever since has him chased down Croydon High Street below rooftop height by a Hurricane.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Knight\u2019s Cross came on 1 May 1941, when he had nineteen victories and 145 combat missions behind him. Through the rest of 1941 he flew from Abbeville-Drucat against RAF Fighter Command\u2019s cross-Channel offensive, claiming six in July alone and reaching 41 by the end of the year. He took command of 6. Staffel on 1 November 1941.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In March 1942 II. Gruppe began converting to the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 at Le Bourget, Staffel by Staffel. Rudorffer flew in Operation Donnerkeil, the fighter cover for the Channel Dash, and claimed two Spitfires north of Dieppe during the raid of 19 August 1942. This was the period in which he became a Fw 190 pilot, which is what he remained for most of the rest of the war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;I was happy to be a fighter pilot since, confident of my own ability, I felt that it gave me the best chance of surviving the war. I certainly didn\u2019t want to drop bombs.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Erich Rudorffer<\/strong> &mdash; On joining JG 2 \u201cRichthofen\u201d as an officer cadet in November 1939, from his own account<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Tunisia: eight in thirty-two minutes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>When the Allies landed in French North Africa in November 1942, II. Gruppe of JG 2 was pulled off the Channel front and sent to Sicily, then to Bizerte. It was the only Fw 190-equipped fighter unit in the Mediterranean theatre. In January 1943 it moved to Kairouan, and Rudorffer was promoted to Hauptmann.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>On 9 February 1943 he claimed eight aircraft in a single 32-minute engagement: six Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and two P-38 Lightnings, logged between 13:59 and 14:22 around Ousseltia and Djebel Barbrou. It made him an ace-in-a-day for the first time. Six days later, on 15 February, he claimed seven more, four P-38s and three Spitfires, in an afternoon that runs from 14:58 to 15:18 in the claim records.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In March II. Gruppe returned to France, and on 17 April Rudorffer took over as Gruppenkommandeur, replacing Hauptmann Adolf Dickfeld. He held the job for ten weeks.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R8IKvTYmwIE\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The East, and the seventeen minutes<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>At the end of June 1943 he was sent east, first to raise a new IV. Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 54 at Jesau near K\u00f6nigsberg, and then, when the commander of II. Gruppe was killed on 30 July, to take that unit instead. By early August II.\/JG 54 was at Ziverskaya, about 65 kilometres south-southwest of Leningrad.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The scale of what happened next is the part that most needs context. On his first sortie in the theatre on 24 August 1943, five Soviet aircraft went down in four minutes. On 11 October he was credited with his 100th victory, the 55th Luftwaffe pilot to reach the figure, and the claim record for that day shows five aircraft between 12:22 and 12:27 near Teremky and Glychow. Then came 6 November: thirteen claims between 13:00 and 13:17, taking him to 122.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Rudorffer himself was perfectly direct about why the East produced numbers the West never did.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;My experiences with JG 54 are probably closest to my heart, and it was with this wing that I achieved my greatest successes. My Gruppe was excellent, with experienced leaders and no arrogance of any kind. The Russian aircraft we flew against weren\u2019t bad, but their pilots lacked experience, so the fighting wasn\u2019t as tough as in the West.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Erich Rudorffer<\/strong> &mdash; On II.\/JG 54 and the Eastern Front, from his own account<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What the numbers actually are<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>There is no single agreed total, and the spread is instructive. Michael Spick lists 222, of which 136 were claimed on the Eastern Front and 86 in the West, including 26 over North Africa and ten heavy bombers. David T. Zabecki gives 224. Morgan and Weal list 220. Mathews and Foreman, working through the German Federal Archives for <em>Luftwaffe Aces \u2014 Biographies and Victory Claims<\/em>, found records for 219 confirmed claims plus two unconfirmed: 134 in the East, 85 in the West, including eleven four-engined bombers and twelve on the Me 262. Rudorffer\u2019s own later account says 224.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>These are claims, logged at the time to a Luftwaffe grid reference: \u201cPQ 35 Ost 53224\u201d and the like. The Jagermeldenetz grid covered Europe, western Russia and North Africa in rectangles of 15 minutes of latitude by 30 of longitude, roughly 930 square kilometres, each subdivided into 36 boxes about 3 by 4 kilometres. That is precise enough to say where a pilot thought an aircraft went down and not precise enough to confirm that one did.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>None of which means the big days did not happen. It means the totals are a record of what a wartime claims system credited, not an audited count, and that they were produced in a target-rich environment that Western Allied fighter pilots never encountered. Comparing a Luftwaffe total with an RAF or USAAF one is comparing two different things.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Finland, Libau, and the two hundredth<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The Oak Leaves to the Knight\u2019s Cross came on 11 April 1944, the 447th award, presented by Hitler at the Berghof on 5 May in a ceremony that also decorated Anton Hafner, Otto Kittel, G\u00fcnther Schack, Emil Lang and several others on the same day. The mass presentation is itself a reminder of how the regime used these men.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>In June 1944, with the Soviet Karelian offensive under way, the Luftwaffe formed Gefechtsverband Kuhlmey to help the Finns. Rudorffer\u2019s II.\/JG 54 was part of it, and moved to Immola Airfield on 17 June. In September the Gruppe relocated to Libau, now Liep\u0101ja, flying from an airfield at Grobin, which is where his nickname \u201cFighter of Libau\u201d comes from. It moved again to Heiligenbeil on 21 October, and a week later, on 28 October 1944, Rudorffer claimed eleven aircraft, among them his 200th.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Swords followed on 26 January 1945, the 126th such award, for 212 claims.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EIxAmkMLbvI\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The jet<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>JG 7 \u201cNowotny\u201d was the first operational jet fighter wing in the world, named for Walter Nowotny, who had been assessing the Me 262 under operational conditions and was killed on 8 November 1944. The Oberkommando der Luftwaffe ordered the wing equipped with the Me 262 four days later, and Adolf Galland, who hoped the jet would offset Allied numerical superiority, appointed Johannes Steinhoff as its first commander.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Rudorffer converted to the Me 262 over the winter and took command of I. Gruppe of JG 7 on 14 January 1945. By 12 February he had twelve serviceable aircraft and every pilot had converted, though the Gruppe was still short of experience in close formation flying and low-level navigation on the FuG 16 Z and FuG 25a radios. In March it was still at Brandenburg-Briest.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>He claimed ten heavy bombers on the jet, seven of them in April 1945. Mathews and Foreman credit him with twelve Me 262 claims in total; Morgan and Weal also say twelve. By then the aircraft was faster and more heavily armed than anything the Allies could put up, and it made no difference whatsoever to the outcome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/messerschmitt-me-262-deutsches-museum-munich.jpg\" alt=\"Messerschmitt Me 262 preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A Messerschmitt Me 262 at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Rudorffer commanded I. Gruppe of JG 7 on the type from January 1945. Photo: Nicola Giorgione \/ CC BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The Me 262 is preserved in a handful of museums and flown today only as modern-build reproductions, which makes the surviving originals the closest anyone gets to the aircraft Rudorffer took over in January 1945.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XKa7_Z4I6NQ\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Seventy years afterwards<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>He ended the war as a Major with the non-operational IV.\/JG 7 at Schleswig-Jagel. What followed was an ordinary aviation career: flying DC-2s and DC-3s in Australia, then Pan Am, then Germany\u2019s civil aviation authority, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt. He was one of the characters in the 2007 Finnish war film <em>Tali-Ihantala 1944<\/em>, for which a Fw 190 was painted in his 1944 markings. That aircraft, a Flug Werk replica, is now at Omaka Aerodrome in New Zealand and still wears them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Rudorffer died at Bad Schwartau on 8 April 2016, aged 98. He was at that point the last living holder of the Knight\u2019s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, which is to say the last man alive who had been handed that particular decoration by that particular state.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The seventeen minutes of 6 November 1943 will keep getting quoted, and they should be, because something extraordinary did happen that afternoon. What they are not is a measurement. They are a claim log from a war, written by the side that lost it, in a theatre where the arithmetic never meant what the propaganda ministry said it meant.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Wikipedia (Erich Rudorffer), drawing on Prien, Stemmer, Rodeike and Bock; Mathews and Foreman, Luftwaffe Aces \u2014 Biographies and Victory Claims; Spick; Zabecki; Morgan and Weal; Forsyth; and Rudorffer\u2019s own first-person account published by the Military Signature Archive.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>Who was Erich Rudorffer?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A Luftwaffe fighter pilot, born in Saxony on 1 November 1917, who served from the Battle of France through to the last weeks of the war with JG 2, JG 54 and the jet-equipped JG 7. He flew more than 1,000 combat missions, was shot down sixteen times, parachuted nine times, and died on 8 April 2016 aged 98 as the last living holder of the Knight\u2019s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did he really shoot down thirteen aircraft in seventeen minutes?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">That is what the claim record says. On 6 November 1943, three days into the Soviet offensive that became the Battle of Kiev, he was credited with thirteen aircraft between 13:00 and 13:17: eight Yak-7s and five Yak-9s. It took his running total to 122. These are wartime claims rather than independently audited kills, which is the caveat that applies to every total of this kind.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many aircraft did Rudorffer actually shoot down?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Nobody can say precisely. Michael Spick lists 222 claims, David T. Zabecki 224, Morgan and Weal 220. Mathews and Foreman, researching the German Federal Archives, found records for 219 confirmed claims plus two unconfirmed. Rudorffer\u2019s own account gives 224. The spread between published figures is itself the clearest evidence of how these records work.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did Luftwaffe pilots have such high totals?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Mainly opportunity. German fighter pilots flew until they were killed or the war ended, rather than rotating home after a tour, and on the Eastern Front they met a very large opponent whose pilots were often inexperienced. Rudorffer said so himself: the Soviet aircraft were not bad, but their pilots lacked experience, so the fighting was not as tough as in the West. Comparing a Luftwaffe total with an RAF or USAAF one compares two different situations.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What were his other big days?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">On 9 February 1943 over Tunisia he claimed eight aircraft in a 32-minute engagement, six P-40 Warhawks and two P-38 Lightnings, becoming an ace-in-a-day for the first time. On 15 February he claimed seven more. On his first sortie on the Eastern Front, on 24 August 1943, five Soviet aircraft went down in four minutes. On 28 October 1944 he claimed eleven, including his 200th.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did he fly?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Bf 109E and F early on, then the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 from April 1942, which is the type he is most associated with and the one he flew throughout his time on the Eastern Front. He converted to the Bf 109G briefly in 1943, and finally to the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet, taking command of I. Gruppe of JG 7 on 14 January 1945.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many kills did he claim on the Me 262?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Between ten and twelve depending on the source. He claimed ten heavy bombers flying the jet, seven of them in April 1945. Mathews and Foreman, and Morgan and Weal, both credit him with twelve Me 262 claims in total.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What happened to him after the war?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">He flew as an airline pilot, starting on DC-2s and DC-3s in Australia, later working for Pan Am and then for the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany\u2019s civil aviation authority. He appeared as a character in the 2007 Finnish film Tali-Ihantala 1944, for which a Flug Werk Fw 190 replica was painted in his 1944 markings; that aircraft is now at Omaka Aerodrome in New Zealand and still carries them.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who was Erich Rudorffer?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A Luftwaffe fighter pilot, born in Saxony on 1 November 1917, who served from the Battle of France through to the last weeks of the war with JG 2, JG 54 and the jet-equipped JG 7. He flew more than 1,000 combat missions, was shot down sixteen times, parachuted nine times, and died on 8 April 2016 aged 98 as the last living holder of the Knight\u2019s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did he really shoot down thirteen aircraft in seventeen minutes?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"That is what the claim record says. On 6 November 1943, three days into the Soviet offensive that became the Battle of Kiev, he was credited with thirteen aircraft between 13:00 and 13:17: eight Yak-7s and five Yak-9s. It took his running total to 122. These are wartime claims rather than independently audited kills, which is the caveat that applies to every total of this kind.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many aircraft did Rudorffer actually shoot down?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Nobody can say precisely. Michael Spick lists 222 claims, David T. Zabecki 224, Morgan and Weal 220. 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Comparing a Luftwaffe total with an RAF or USAAF one compares two different situations.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What were his other big days?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"On 9 February 1943 over Tunisia he claimed eight aircraft in a 32-minute engagement, six P-40 Warhawks and two P-38 Lightnings, becoming an ace-in-a-day for the first time. On 15 February he claimed seven more. On his first sortie on the Eastern Front, on 24 August 1943, five Soviet aircraft went down in four minutes. On 28 October 1944 he claimed eleven, including his 200th.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What did he fly?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The Bf 109E and F early on, then the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 from April 1942, which is the type he is most associated with and the one he flew throughout his time on the Eastern Front. He converted to the Bf 109G briefly in 1943, and finally to the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet, taking command of I. Gruppe of JG 7 on 14 January 1945.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many kills did he claim on the Me 262?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Between ten and twelve depending on the source. He claimed ten heavy bombers flying the jet, seven of them in April 1945. Mathews and Foreman, and Morgan and Weal, both credit him with twelve Me 262 claims in total.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What happened to him after the war?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"He flew as an airline pilot, starting on DC-2s and DC-3s in Australia, later working for Pan Am and then for the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany\u2019s civil aviation authority. He appeared as a character in the 2007 Finnish film Tali-Ihantala 1944, for which a Flug Werk Fw 190 replica was painted in his 1944 markings; that aircraft is now at Omaka Aerodrome in New Zealand and still carries them.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/adolf-galland-luftwaffe-ace-general-give-me-spitfires\/\">Adolf Galland: \u201cGive Me a Squadron of Spitfires\u201d<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/david-mccampbell-nine-kills-one-mission-leyte-gulf-1944\/\">David McCampbell: Nine Kills in One Mission<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/charles-debellevue-wso-ace-vietnam-six-kills-f-4-phantom\/\">Charles DeBellevue: The Back-Seater Who Became an Ace<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 6 November 1943 a German fighter pilot logged thirteen victories in seventeen minutes. Erich Rudorffer flew more than 1,000 missions, was shot down sixteen times, and died in 2016 at 98 \u2014 and his totals are a case study in what wartime claim records are and are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":23685895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23686641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Erich Rudorffer: Thirteen Claims in Seventeen Minutes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Erich Rudorffer flew 1,000+ missions, was shot down 16 times and claimed 13 aircraft in 17 minutes in 1943. 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