BUILT

W. Nr. 130297, Fw. Horst Petzschler, 10./ JG 51, Bulltofta, Sweden, May 1945

Horst Petzschler was born in Berlin on September 1st, 1921 and joined the Luftwaffe on April 1st, 1941. After undergoing fighter pilot training, he was

assigned to JG 51 on August 23rd, 1943, and it was there he would gain his first three kills. On April 13th, 1944, he was transferred to 2./JG3 which was

a component of the Defence of the Reich structure, but by June 1944, he would return to JG 51 on the Eastern Front. On May 4th, 1945, III./ JG51 was

relocated to Schleswig-Holstein from eastern Prussia. Horst Petzschler did not reach that location due to a navigation error and landed at Bulltofta in Sweden,

where he was interned and in January 1946, the Swedes handed him over to the Soviets. He was released from captivity on September 22nd, 1949. On his

return, he worked for the Berlin Police Department and in 1953, he emigrated to Canada and then the United States, where he worked in the aviation industry.

He retired in 1988. Over the course of the Second World War, he downed 26 enemy aircraft. The number 0297 is brush painted ahead of the tail plane, the lastfour digits of the serial number. Not all sections of the bottoms of the wings were painted in RLM76, but for reasons of short supplies were left in natural metal.

INFO Eduard - January 2020

eduard

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