an island!”—a typical response for an auda-
cious fighter pilot.
The Germans handily lost the Battle of
Britain, and Hitler subsequently turned his at-
tention east toward Russia. When this was in-
vaded in June 1941, Bär accompanied his unit
to the front, racking up another 43 kills in
quick succession. For this he received the
prestigious Ritterkreuz(Knight’s Cross) with
oak leaves—and was finally commissioned a
lieutenant. Daringly aggressive, Bär disre-
garded orders and foolishly pursued Russian
aircraft far over enemy territory. In this man-
ner he was shot down again on August 31,
1941, parachuted behind Russian lines, and
fractured his spine in two places. But Bär, ig-
noring intense pain, spent two agonizing days
dragging himself 30 miles back to German
lines. Hospitalized for several months, he re-
turned to Russia and brought up his total
score to 90 victories by February 1942. He
then acquired swords to his Knight’s Cross
before leaving the Eastern Front with a total
of 107 kills. By the spring of 1942, Bär had
been transferred to JG 77 in Sicily, where he
led a squadron. He spent the next several
months fighting numerous British and Ameri-
can air units across North Africa and the
Mediterranean. Another 45 enemy planes fell
to his able marksmanship before he was fi-
nally rotated to Germany for defense of the
homeland.
At this time, the U.S. Army Air Force under
James H. Doolittle and Carl A. Spaatz had em-
barked on massed precision daytime bombing
of German industrial targets. Almost daily,
huge fleets of heavily armed Boeing B-17 Fly-
ing Fortressesand Consolidated B-24 Libera-
tors were slowly pounding the Nazi heartland
into scrap metal. Bär, a kommodorewith JG 1
and then JG 3, transitioned to an even dead-
lier fighter, the radial-engine Focke-Wulf
Fw190. He also learned how to tackle the
heavily armed Allied bombers, eventually
shooting down a total of 21. After January
1944, the Americans began deploying large
numbers of North American P-51 Mustangs
and Republic P-47 Thunderbolts as escort
fighters, and German losses rose exponen-
tially. Bär was now pitted against such aero-
nautical mavens as Francis S. Gabreski, Don
S. Gentile, Robert S. Johnson, and Hub
Zemke, all accomplished fliers. The battle was
joined in earnest, and Bär was shot down a
total of 18 times. However, on April 22, 1944,
he became only the seventh Luftwaffe pilot to
reach 200 kills, confirming his reputation as
one of Germany’s great fliers. But the attrition
rate suffered by veteran pilots was great, and
Bär began leading larger and larger numbers
of inexperienced men into combat.
Prospects looked increasingly grim for the
Third Reich until the advent of the Messer-
schmitt Me 262, the world’s first jet fighter, in
August 1944. Hitler was gambling that such
new wonder weapons could wrest control of
the air from Allied hands, so he ordered the
creation of special all-jet squadrons flown by
experienced aces. In January 1945, Bär was
appointed instructor of the Jet Fighter School
at Lechfeld. The following month, while flight-
testing the Me262, he established a new air-
speed record of 645 miles per hour and an al-
titude record of 48,000 feet. Shortly after, he
was transferred to Gen. Adolf Galland’s
JagdverbandJV 44, the elite Squadron of Ex-
perts. In this capacity Bär quickly mastered
the nuances of jet combat and went on to
score 15 additional kills in the Me 262. On
April 22, 1945, he succeeded Galland as com-
mander of JV 44, ending the war with a total
tally of 215 victories. He was also the lead
scorer among Me262 pilots, an aviation first.
Bär’s career is unique among German aces,
for he flew combat missions during the entire
war and in every theater. He survived more
than 1,000 combat missions against virtually
every type of aircraft the Allies could throw
against him and won—usually. “A very good
pilot in any of these aircraft was tough to han-
dle, and if he had the tactical advantage, he
had a good chance to win the fight,” Bär ob-
served. “You see from my own eighteen expe-
riences as someone else’s victory that they
often did win.” However, his reputation as a
leading jet ace militated against him in theBÄR, HEINZ