Date of birth:

May 23rd, 1923 (Schmölz/Oberfranken, Germany)

Date of death:

August 26th, 2010 (Schwabach/Bavaria, Germany)

Nationality:

German

Walter Wolfrum was born on 23rd May 1923 and entered the Luftwaffe as a volunteer in October 1940. After his military training at the the Military School in Berlin he was trained on the Focke Wulf Fw 44 and the Meesserschmitt Bf 109B. He was placed in a training unit at St.Jean d’Angely in France in November 1942 and there flew with the Messerschmitt Me 109F-2 and F-4. In February 1943 he was transferred to the Crimea with the 5./Jagdgeschwader 52. He flew his first operational missions in March in the Cuban-Bridgehead. After about 60 missions he shot his first enemy plane down in June 1943. After many missions over several battlefields, by April 1944 he already had scored 70 victories. He continued these scores over several operations on the Eastern Front, being shot down himself several times and being wounded and hospitalized in July 1944. He returned to the front in February 1945 as Oberleutnant and resumed command of 1. / Jagdgeschwader 52. When the war ended he had achieved 137 victories in 423 operational flights. Over 119 of the victories were fighter planes and he scored one gunboat. In total he had been wounded four times and had to carry out 12 emergency landings.
On 8th May 1945, his unit was on Brod Airfield in Czechoslowakia, where they surrenderd to the American forces. After three weeks of imprisonment with the Americans, the whole Jagdgeschwader 52 prisoners were handed over to the Soviet-Union. Walter Wolfrum was released in that process due to his war injuries.
After the war he became a pilot in aerobatic flying and became National Champion in 1962

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• Photo 1: Norbert Beyerlein
• - OBERMAIER, E., Die Ritterkreuzträger der Luftwaffe, Hoffmann, 1989.
  - Die Ordensträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht (CD), VMD-Verlag GmbH, Osnabrück, 2002
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  - Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939-1945