16 Facts About Walter Nowotny

Walter Nowotny was an Austrian-born fighter ace of the Luftwaffe in World War II.

Walter Nowotny scored an "ace in a day" on multiple occasions, shooting down at least five airplanes on the same day, including two occurrences of "double-ace in a day" in mid-1943.

Walter Nowotny was born in Gmund, a small town in Lower Austria.

Walter Nowotny's father, Rudolf Nowotny, was a railway official; his two brothers, Rudolf and Hubert, became officers in the Wehrmacht.

Hubert Walter Nowotny was killed in action in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Walter Nowotny attended the primary school in Schwarzenau before graduating to the Bundesoberrealschule in Waidhofen an der Thaya.

Walter Nowotny had joined the Nazi Party in 1938 with a membership number 6,382,781.

Walter Nowotny trained as a fighter pilot at the Jagdfliegerschule 5 in Wien-Schwechat, the same school that Hans-Joachim Marseille had attended one year earlier.

Walter Nowotny was shot down in the same engagement by Aleksandr Avdeyev, in a I-153 fighter.

Walter Nowotny was the 42nd Luftwaffe pilot to achieve the century mark.

Walter Nowotny was celebrating this feat in the Ria Bar in Vilna when he received a phone call from Hitler himself, announcing that he had been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, making him the eighth of 27 men to be so honored.

Walter Nowotny immediately went on a short vacation to Vienna before returning to his front-line unit.

Walter Nowotny was made Geschwaderkommodore of Jagdgeschwader 101 and commander of the Jagdfliegerschule 1, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot training school at Pau in southern France, in April 1944.

Walter Nowotny radioed that he had downed a B-24 Liberator and a P-51 Mustang before he reported one engine failing and made one final garbled transmission containing the word "burning".

Walter Nowotny was buried at the Vienna Central Cemetery in a grave of honour sponsored by the city of Vienna.

Walter Nowotny's grave remains a frequent target of both far-left vandalism and far-right memorial festivities.