Your comments etc appreciated. This chap I know was in a Flak unit and was killed near Grodno in 1942.
Luftwaffe Unteroffizier (corporal). cap piping and collar backings will be in red if he's from a Flak unit. dave.
Its a luftwaffe uniform alright and it does look like the luftwaffe's insignia on the belt buckle. I dont think that luftwaffe personnel were attached to Heer Units so I would imagine that our chap here might have been attached to a flak battery at an airfield for example.
Thanks gents - is there any significance to the number of 'wings' (?Eagles) on the collar badges. I am sure I have seen photos of men with more than the one shown here?
Luftwaffe Unteroffizier (corporal). cap piping and collar backings will be in red if he's from a Flak unit. dave. And Owens chart certainly backs you up Dave . Spot on.
Luftwaffe Ranks with some illustrations. Luftwaffe Insignia and Basic-Rank System Owen - that's perfect, thanks!
Just looking at the picture above and musing about the fate of this chap one wonders how much the Germans feared what they called "The Ostfront" Total losses over 4 Million dead, and 3.5 million casualties. I'd say to be told you were being sent east was the least popular posting for any German soldier in WW2. How many knew what fate was in store for them?* *Please note that this is in no way an attempt to justify what happened, nor is it a sympathetic sop to the German position in WW2. It is more a statement about what the Eastern Front meant to the German soldier in the war.
That's for sure, Ger; being sent to the Ostfront certainly something no soldier could have relished. If you add POWs to the above, I think the casualty figure comes to 10 million for the Germans; their greatest military loss in their entire history. Finally got a copy of the BBCs 'War of the Century', one of my favourite WW2 series. It really is an excellent series, and conveys the horror of it from all sides.
One of the first "shocks" I saw in relation to the Luftwaffe was some footage shown in a Lawrence Ress doc. for BBC - it showed men being rounded up "in the east". The troops were all Luftwaffe men - the collar rank badges and eagle on their helmets confirming this - the dark side of the war in the east. The footage had been shot in a town what the "round up" was in aid off was not made clear - forced labour , suspected partisan, hostages against an act of sabotage , "Jews" but rounded up at gun point and pushed along by men of the Luftwaffe. A nice photo - good quality and well cut uniform.
