page_title: Erich Hartmann
section_title: Post-war years
hierarchical_section_title: Erich Hartmann / Post-war years
caption_attribution_description: Picture taken at Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr on Feb 18, 2007
context_page_description: Erich Alfred Hartmann was a German fighter pilot during World War II and the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He flew 1,404 combat missions and participated in aerial combat on 825 separate occasions. He was credited with shooting down 352 Allied aircraft—345 Soviet and seven American—while serving with the Luftwaffe. During the course of his career, Hartmann was forced to crash-land his fighter 16 times due to either damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had just shot down or mechanical failure.
  Hartmann, a pre-war glider pilot, joined the Luftwaffe in 1940 and completed his fighter pilot training in 1942. He was posted to the veteran Jagdgeschwader 52 on the Eastern Front and was fortunate to be placed under the supervision of some of the Luftwaffe's most experienced fighter pilots. Under their guidance, Hartmann steadily developed his tactics.
context_section_description: During his long imprisonment, Hartmann's son, Erich-Peter, was born in 1945 and died as a three-year-old in 1948, without his father ever having seen him. Hartmann later had a daughter, Ursula Isabel, born on 23 February 1957.
  When Hartmann returned to West Germany, he reentered military service in the Bundeswehr and became an officer in the West German Air Force, where he commanded West Germany's first all-jet unit from 6 June 1959 to 29 May 1962, Jagdgeschwader 71 "Richthofen". This unit was equipped initially with Canadair Sabres and later with Lockheed F-104 Starfighters.
  Hartmann also made several trips to the United States, where he was trained on U.S. Air Force equipment. In 1957 Hartmann began training with American instructors. The German pilots were trained at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. The Republic F-84 Thunderjet fighter course lasted 60 days and consisted of 33 hours of flight time in the Lockheed T-33 and 47
  hours in the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak. Hartmann and the former Luftwaffe pilots needed only familiarisation training.
  Hartmann considered the F-104 a fundamentally flawed and unsafe aircraft and strongly opposed its adoption by the air force. Already in 1957, Hartmann had recommended to Kammhuber to first buy and evaluate a few new and unfamiliar aircraft before committing the air force to a new aircraft type. Although events subsequently validated his low opinion of the aircraft (269 crashes and 116 German pilots killed on the F-104 in non-combat missions, along with allegations of bribes culminating in the Lockheed scandal), Hartmann's outspoken criticism proved unpopular with his superiors, and he was put into early retirement in 1970.
  From 1971–74, Hartmann worked as a flight instructor in Hangelar, near Bonn, and also flew in fly-ins with other wartime pilots.
  Hartmann died on 20 September 1993, at the age of 71 in Weil im Schönbuch.
  In 2016, Hartmann's former unit, JG 71, honoured him by applying his tulip colour scheme to their current aircraft.
caption: German Air Force Canadair Sabre in the Hartmann "black tulip" color scheme at the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History
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