Stormbird – Flying through fire as a Luftwaffe ground attack pilot and Me 262 ace

Bomber pilots who become fighter aces are rare; Hermann Buchner was one. The author, a Luftwaffe NCO pilot and Knight's Cross holder, gives a riveting account of his train- ing with the pre-war Austrian airforce, in- structing with the Luftwaffe, then the terri- fying ground attack operations on the East- ern Front trying to stop the Russian mincing machine.

Serving alongside many well- known aces, sometimes taking off from his home airfield while under Soviet shellfire, he paints a picture of a man surviving against incredible odds, who became one of the elite with JG7, and learnt that the important thing with the Me 262 was to land near a conven- ient foxhole...

Jacket cover picture: 0820, 20 October 1944, as Oberfeldwebel Hermann Buchner of Kommando Nowotny climbs through the winter clouds on a test flight from Lechfeld in Messerschmitt Me 262A-1a 'White 7. The flight lasted 27 minutes. 

He made an- other at 1630 in the same aircraft, his 2,405th flight since the beginning of World War II.

Luftwaffe camou- flage was going through a period of transition at this time so the aircraft is shown here in the RLM 81/82/ 76 scheme which was then being generally introduced.