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WORLD FAMOUS FLYING ACE ERNST UDET 1935 ILLUSTRATED AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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This is a very nice hardcover example of the 1935 German language book Mein Fliegerleben (My Flying Life) by Ernst Udet. In the foreword Udet states he wrote this book for young people, “the future that will judge our deeds”. He dedicated Mein Fliegerleben to his dead comrades, “who did their best for all of us.” He also urges everybody to be in charge of their own destiny and to enjoy every day.

In Mein Fliegerleben Udet writes interesting details about his service during World War I, his return to Munich at the end of World War I, Udet-Flugzeugbau (the aircraft manufacturing company he founded in the summer of 1921), his work in films, experiences during air shows in the USA, flying to South America and over East Africa, time in Greenland and more.

The Appendix of Mein Fliegerleben contains Ernst Udet’s remarkable World War I air victory record starting on 18 March 1916 until 26 September 1918. It lists the unit, date and time, airplane type, and town / area where the various uits and Udet shot down their enemies.

The first plane Udet’s shot down was a Farman above Mühlhausen and the last one, number 62, was a D.H. 9 taken south of Metz.

No German pilot of the era was better known or more highly thought of than World War I flying ace Ernst Udet.

Born in Frankfurt am Main on 26 April 1896, Ernst Udet rose to fame during World War I in the Von Richthofen Squadron. Oberleutnant Udet was the second-highest scoring German ace of World War I, the leading surviving ace, and the youngest ace, age 22 when the war ended in 1918 with 62 confirmed victories to his name. He was awarded Germany's highest military honor, the Ordre pour le Mérite, the "Blue Max."

Left, a picture of Ernst Udet in Los Angeles with flamboyant record-breaking American aviator Roscoe Turner.

Below, a photo of famous American WWI fighter pilot and Medal of Honor recipient Eddie Rickenbacker with a handwritten dedication "to my dear friend Major Ernst Udet. I am glad we are both able to talk about the old days."

Published in 1935 by Verlag Ullstein of Berlin, this 5-1/2 x 8-5/8 inch, 188-page blue hardcover example of Mein Fliegerleben has gold blocking on the front cover and spine.

The original 88 year old dust jacket has some scotch tape repairs. Tight spine, no odor.

The book has 78 unusual pictures printed on glossy paper of pre-WW1 gliders Udet built and tested, Udet on his first motorcycle, in his World War I uniform, a Fokker cockpit, with fellow pilots in France, in front of his Albatros D III, wearing a captured French crash helmet (“not comfortable, not practical but captured by me!”), in his ‘trusty’ Albatros D V, as the leader of Jagdstaffel 37 in Flanders in 1917, Lothar and Manfred von Richthofen, Canadian pilot Roy Brown looking at the machine guns of Manfred von Richthofen’s airplane after it was shot down, his air field barracks, with Karl Bodenschatz, the last Commander of the Richthofen-Geschwader - Hermann Göring, Eddie Rickenbacker, WW1 Canadian flying ace Billie Bishop, with record-breaking American aviator Roscoe Turner in Los Angeles, testing a diving helmet in Harold Lloyd’s swimming pool, the U4 of Udet-Flugzeugbau in South America, with Eskimos in Greenland, and more.

Above, Hermann Göring (the last Commander of the Richthofen-Geschwader) and below Lothar and Manfred von Richthofen.