1. Hans-Joachim Marseille is noted for his aerial battles during the North African Campaign and his Bohemian lifestyle.
99 Facts About Hans-Joachim Marseille
1. 2.
Under the guidance of his new commander, who recognised the latent potential in the young officer, Hans-Joachim Marseille quickly developed his abilities as a fighter pilot.
3.
Hans-Joachim Marseille reached the zenith of his fighter pilot career on 1 September 1942, when during the course of three combat sorties he claimed 17 enemy fighters shot down, earning him the Ritterkreuz mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten.
4.
Hans-Joachim "Jochen" Walter Rudolf Siegfried Marseille was born to Charlotte and Hauptmann Siegfried Georg Martin Marseille, a family with paternal French ancestry, in Berlin-Charlottenburg on 13 December 1919.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille's father was an Army officer during World War I, and later left the armed forces to join the Berlin police force.
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When Hans-Joachim Marseille was still a young child his parents divorced and his mother subsequently married a police official named Reuter.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille initially assumed the name of his stepfather at school but reverted to using his father's name of Hans-Joachim Marseille in adulthood.
8.
Hans-Joachim Marseille had a difficult relationship with his natural father, whom he refused to visit in Hamburg for some time after the divorce.
9.
Hans-Joachim Marseille attended a Volksschule in Berlin, and from the age of 10, the Prinz-Heinrichs-Gymnasium, a secondary school that prepares students for higher education at a university, in Berlin-Schoneberg.
10.
Hans-Joachim Marseille joined the Luftwaffe on 7 November 1938 as an officer candidate and received his basic training in Quedlinburg in the Harz region.
11.
On 1 March 1939 Hans-Joachim Marseille was transferred to the Luftkriegsschule 4 near Furstenfeldbruck.
12.
Hans-Joachim Marseille completed his training at a Fighter Pilot School in Vienna to which he was posted on 1 November 1939.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille graduated with an outstanding evaluation on 18 July 1940 and was assigned to Erganzungsjagdgruppe Merseburg, stationed at the airport in Merseburg-West.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille's unit was assigned to air defence duty over the Leuna plant from the outbreak of war until the fall of France.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille again received an outstanding evaluation, this time by commander Herbert Ihlefeld.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille defeated his opponent by pulling up into a tight chandelle to gain an altitude advantage before diving and firing.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille was then engaged from above by more Allied fighters.
18.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was reprimanded when it emerged he had abandoned his wingman, and Staffel to engage the opponent alone.
19.
In so doing, Hans-Joachim Marseille had violated a basic rule of air combat.
20.
Reportedly, Hans-Joachim Marseille did not take any pleasure in this victory and found it difficult to accept the realities of aerial combat.
21.
Hans-Joachim Marseille paddled around in the water for three hours before being rescued by the float plane based at Schellingwoude.
22.
In engaging Bennions, or Tuck, Hans-Joachim Marseille had abandoned his leader Staffelkapitan Adolf Buhl, who was shot down and killed.
23.
Days later, Hans-Joachim Marseille was passed over for promotion and was now the sole Fahnrich in the Geschwader.
24.
Hans-Joachim Marseille wrote off four aircraft as a result of operations during this period.
25.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was a very gifted pilot, but he was unreliable.
26.
Hans-Joachim Marseille had girlfriends everywhere, and they kept him so busy that he was sometimes so worn out that he had to be grounded.
27.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's squadron departed the scene after they had ensured that he had got down safely.
28.
Hans-Joachim Marseille continued his journey, first hitchhiking on an Italian truck, then, finding this too slow, he tried his luck at an airstrip, but in vain.
29.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's character appealed to the General and he put at his disposal his own Opel Admiral, complete with chauffeur.
30.
Since Hans-Joachim Marseille was leaning forward, the rounds missed him by inches.
31.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was lucky, as bullets passed both in front of his face and behind his head; 30 hits were counted after Hans-Joachim Marseille crash landed.
32.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was further frustrated after damage forced him to land on two occasions: once on 14 June 1941 and again after he was hit by ground fire over Tobruk and was forced to land blind.
33.
Hans-Joachim Marseille persisted, and created a unique self-training programme for himself, both physical and tactical, which resulted not only in outstanding situational awareness, marksmanship and confident control of the aircraft, but in a unique attack tactic that preferred a high-angle deflection shooting attack and shooting at the target's front from the side, instead of the common method of chasing an aircraft and shooting at it directly from behind.
34.
Hans-Joachim Marseille often practised these tactics on the way back from missions with his comrades and became known as a master of deflection shooting.
35.
On 13 September 1941, Hans-Joachim Marseille shot down Pat Byers of No 451 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille flew to Byers' airfield and dropped a note informing the Australians of his condition and treatment.
37.
Hans-Joachim Marseille returned several days later with second note telling of Byers' death.
38.
Hans-Joachim Marseille repeated these sorties after being warned by Neumann that Goring had forbidden any more flights of this kind.
39.
Hans-Joachim Marseille became known amongst his peers for downing or damaging multiple enemy aircraft in a sortie.
40.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's achievements had previously been regarded as impossible and they were never excelled by anyone after his death.
41.
Hans-Joachim Marseille worked to strengthen his legs and abdominal muscles to help him tolerate the extreme g forces of air combat.
42.
Hans-Joachim Marseille drank an abnormal amount of milk and shunned sunglasses, in the belief that doing so would improve his eyesight.
43.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's successes had begun to become readily apparent by early 1942.
44.
Hans-Joachim Marseille claimed his 37th through 40th victories on 8 February 1942 and 41st through 44th victories four days later, which earned him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that same month for 46 victories.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille attacked under conditions many considered unfavourable, but his marksmanship allowed him to make an approach fast enough to escape the return fire of the two aircraft flying on either flank of the target.
46.
Hans-Joachim Marseille worked alone in combat, keeping his wingman at a safe distance so he would not fire on him in error or collide with him.
47.
Hans-Joachim Marseille developed his own special tactics, which differed significantly from the methods of most other pilots.
48.
Hans-Joachim Marseille even took it to the point where he had to operate his landing flaps as not to fall down, because, of course he had to fly his curve more tightly than the upper defensive circle.
49.
Hans-Joachim Marseille nevertheless managed to shoot down another Kittyhawk, before nursing his overheating aircraft back to base.
50.
Hans-Joachim Marseille marked his grave, collected his papers and verified his identity, then flew to Buckland's airfield to deliver a letter of regret.
51.
On 3 June 1942, Hans-Joachim Marseille attacked a formation of 16 Curtiss P-40 fighters and shot down six aircraft of No 5 Squadron SAAF, five of them in six minutes, including three aces: Robin Pare, Cecil Golding and Andre Botha ; the latter crash-landed his damaged fighter.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves on 6 June 1942.
53.
Hans-Joachim Marseille thought nothing of jumping into a fight outnumbered ten to one, often alone, with us trying to catch up to him.
54.
On 17 June 1942, Hans-Joachim Marseille claimed his 100th aerial victory.
55.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was the 11th Luftwaffe pilot to achieve this.
56.
Hans-Joachim Marseille then returned to Germany for two months' leave and the following day was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.
57.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was made famous through propaganda that treated fighter pilots as superstars and continued to do so after his death.
58.
Hans-Joachim Marseille accidentally switched the engine off as the throttle control in Italian aircraft operated in the opposite direction to that of the German aircraft.
59.
Hans-Joachim Marseille had nearly surpassed his friend Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt's score of 59 victories in just five weeks.
60.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was becoming physically exhausted by the frenetic pace of combat.
61.
Hans-Joachim Marseille, according to his own post-battle accounts, had been engaged by a Spitfire pilot in an intense dogfight that began at high altitude and descended to low level.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille recounted how both he and his opponent strove to get onto the tail of the other.
63.
Hans-Joachim Marseille had previously ignored orders to use these new aircraft because of its high engine failure rate, but on the orders of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, Hans-Joachim Marseille reluctantly obeyed.
64.
Hans-Joachim Marseille rejected this offer, stating that he was needed at the front and had already taken three months' vacation that year.
65.
Hans-Joachim Marseille said he wanted to take leave at Christmas to marry his fiancee Hanne-Lies Kupper.
66.
On 30 September 1942, Hauptmann Hans-Joachim Marseille was leading his Staffel on a Stuka escort mission covering the withdrawal of the group and relieving the outward escort, III.
67.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's flight was vectored onto Allied aircraft in the vicinity but the opponent withdrew and did not take up combat.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille vectored the heading and height of the formation to Neumann who directed III.
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At this point, Hans-Joachim Marseille deemed his aircraft no longer flyable and decided to bail out, his last words to his comrades being "I've got to get out now, I can't stand it any longer".
70.
Hans-Joachim Marseille worked his way out of the cockpit only to be carried backwards by the slipstream.
71.
Hans-Joachim Marseille fell almost vertically, hitting the desert floor 7 kilometres south of Sidi Abdel Rahman.
72.
Hans-Joachim Marseille lay in state in the Staffel sick bay, his comrades coming to pay their respects throughout the day.
73.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's funeral took place on 1 October 1942 at the Heroes Cemetery in Derna with Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring and Eduard Neumann delivering a eulogy.
74.
Hans-Joachim Marseille was succeeded by Oberleutnant Jost Schlang as Staffelkapitan of 3.
75.
Hans-Joachim Marseille ruled out the existence of a fire, for he did not believe Marseille could have spoken for nine minutes without fatigue in smoke caused by a fire.
76.
The more success Hans-Joachim Marseille had, the more his staffel relied on him to carry the greater share of aerial victories claimed by the unit.
77.
Historians Hans Ring and Christopher Shores point to the fact that Hans-Joachim Marseille's promotions were based on personal success rates more than any other reason, and other pilots did not get to score air victories, let alone become Experten themselves.
78.
Hans-Joachim Marseille appeared four times in the Deutsche Wochenschau, the German propaganda newsreel.
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The second time was on Wednesday 1 July 1942 when Hans-Joachim Marseille travelled to Rastenburg to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords from Adolf Hitler.
80.
Hans-Joachim Marseille's death did not prohibit his inclusion in the Die Wehrmacht on 21 and 28 October 1942.
81.
MGFA concluded that, since there is no academic biography of Marseille, "it is not known that Hans-Joachim Marseille has, through his overall actions or through a single outstanding deed, earned praise in the service for freedom and justice [as defined in the current guidelines for military tradition]".
82.
The chapter asserts that the stories told about Hans-Joachim Marseille are rooted in wartime [Nazi] propaganda.
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However, they assert, like Werner Molders, that Hans-Joachim Marseille was not a political soldier, but apolitical, despite the prevailing political situation in the Third Reich.
84.
Several biographies of Hans-Joachim Marseille have described his disdain for authority and for the National Socialist movement in general.
85.
When Hans-Joachim Marseille first met Hitler in 1942, he did not form a positive impression.
86.
Later that month Hans-Joachim Marseille was invited to another party function, despite his earlier stunt.
87.
When Hans-Joachim Marseille returned to his unit, he reportedly asked his friends Franzisket, Clade and Schroer whether they had heard what was happening to Jews and if perhaps something was underway that they did not know about.
88.
Hans-Joachim Marseille recounted how he had attempted to ask questions about Jews who had vanished from his own neighbourhood, including the family doctor who had delivered him at birth.
89.
Hans-Joachim Marseille never spoke of this with his comrades again.
90.
In 1942, Hans-Joachim Marseille befriended a black South African Army prisoner of war, Corporal Mathew Letuku, nicknamed Mathias.
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Hans-Joachim Marseille took him as a personal helper rather than allow him to be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Europe.
92.
Staffel then befriended Hans-Joachim Marseille and became his domestic helper in Africa.
93.
One of the Schwarmfuhrer was Oberfeldwebel Helmut Goedert, to whom Hans-Joachim Marseille was assigned as wingman.
94.
Hans-Joachim Marseille flew his first combat mission on the next day, Wednesday 13 August 1940 and claimed his first aerial victory on 24 August 1940.
95.
Christopher Shores et al say that Hans-Joachim Marseille over-claimed on occasion, particularly in September 1942.
96.
Axis fighter pilots, including Hans-Joachim Marseille, destroyed very few bombers over North Africa.
97.
Bungay pointed out the relatively low military value of shooting down Allied fighters, rather than bombers saying that "most of the pilots of JG 27 milled about watching in awe as Hans-Joachim Marseille exhibited his graceful if gory skills".
98.
When he arrived, Tate was informed the Knights Cross, Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds belonging to Hans-Joachim Marseille had been stolen.
99.
Hans-Joachim Marseille joined the military service in Wehrmacht on 7 November 1938.