This picture shows Erich Hartmann (right) with his crew chief Heinz Mertens (left).
On 25 October 1942, a young Leutnant by the name of Erich Hartmann had recently arrived at the main base of JG 52 at Maykop, 140 miles north-west of Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus. Suddenly a desperate voice cracked in the loudspeaker of the radio receiver: ‘Clear the field, I’m hit! I can see the field and have to land immediately!’ And seconds later: ‘Damned! Hope I’ll make it! Now my engine is on fire…!’ A red flare went into the air, then a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G appeared, trailing black smoke. With the landing gear down, it touched ground, rolled – and turned over, crashed and violently burst into flames. Leutnant Hartmann was stunned.
‘It’s Krupinski!’ cried someone. The ammunition in the Bf 109 went off. Tracers and 20 mm shells flew in all direction. A human body disengaged from the blazing inferno, came dashing toward security. He stopped in front of his Kommodore, Major Dietrich Hrabak, face ghastly pale but still laughing: ‘I received some nasty anti-aircraft hits over the damned Caucasus’.
‘Krupinski. Tonight we shall celebrate your birthday’, the Kommodore said, and then turned to the newcomer: ‘Always when a pilot gets out of a difficult situation, we celebrate his birthday.’ – ‘And what when a pilot is killed?’ asked the pale Leutnant. ‘Then we get so drunk that we forget him’, came the reply.
Erich Hartmann was taken care of by Leutnant Alfred
Grislawski, a veteran from Hermann Graf’s 9. “Karaya”
Staffel. Alfred Grislawski was a muscular son of a miner.
Although he had refused to enter the Nazi Party – much under
influence of his father, who still was a vehement anti-Nazi, he
had scored large successes in the air war against the USSR. On 2
November 1942 he returned to base from his253rd combat flight
with a report of one I-16 and one I-153 shot down, his 62nd
and 63rd victories. During an interview at his home in
Herne, Germany, in October 1998, Alfred Grislawski told the
author:
“I was to take responsability for the newcomer Erich Hartmann. I looked at him and thought: “Oh my God, what are they sending us now? What a baby!”
Alfred Grislawski was one of the toughest German fighter pilots. And he knew it. During combat missions he didn’t hesitate to “lighten his heart” whenever any of his comrades committed a mistake. Even his Gruppenkommandeur, Major Hubertus von Bonin, had his share of Grislawski’s “criticism”. Leutnant Hartmann was shocked as he once heard Grislawski addressing Major von Bonin in the R/T during a dogfight:
“What the h… are you think you are doing? If you won’t listen to me you can kiss my…!”
Alfred Grislawski treated the newcomer in the ordinary harsh manner of a member of the working class. He was constantly picking on Erich Hartmann, shouting at him, insulting him and nagging on him for all Hartmann’s beginner’s mistakes. Grislawski never excused Hartmann for any mistake. Whenever Hartmann made a mistake in the air during the training passes with Grislawski, his headphones would explode in a harsh scream from his mentor: “Do you really want to die that quick? Don’t you think the Russians can fly? How many times have I told you – don’t do it like that!” – With the scornful addition: “Little boy…”
“Little boy” – “Bubi” – it was Alfred Grislawski who invented this later so famous nickname for Erich Hartmann.
But “Bubi” learned. He couldn’t have had a better teacher. Afterwards, Hartmann stated that he not only learned “everything” from Grislawski; it also was Grislawski that saved his life.
On his 19th combat mission, on 5 November 1942, Erich Hartmann finally managed to shoot down an enemy aircraft – an Il-2 Shtumovik. Although Hartmann had to undertake a belly-landing because his own Bf 109G had been hit by debris from the damaged Il-2, he finally had “learned how to do it”.
The pilot of the Il-2 survived with injuries. Fate would lead him to meet Erich Hartmann under totally different circumstances many years later. This will be described in detail in Vol. 2 of “Black Cross/Red Star; Air War on the Eastern Front”.
Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-4/R6 (WkNo 149 97) of 7./JG 52, flown by 'Bubi' Hartmann in 1943 on Eastern Front. Black radio code KJ+GU was overpainted by white 2+~, on rudder 15 white kill bars. This machine was lost by Uffz. Herbert Meisner after crash land on soviet-hold territory.
1999.04.05, © WW II Ace Stories.