Warbirds in Review: Shorty Rankin and Gunther Rall 

Respect and thanks to your uncle for his service. The Greatest Generation.

I met him on 2003 on seminar in Finland and got autograph for his book. He told some incredible and sometimes funny stories on seminar that day. A great man and fine man. But there was no mutual respect between russian and german pilots.

Agreed. I hate it when people hate on the Germans. The Luftwaffe wasn't filled with hardcore nazis. Many had flown before the war and they were just normal men. Brave individuals who did their job. Hats off to both of them and every other single pilot who fought through it all and made it.

+Crappy Nappy Me too.....agree 100%. They did their job.....R.I.P. both of them.

+KilroyTheGreat I Know Only Of Rall, But I Have Seen Him And Rankin In Other Documentaries Talking About The B17s And P51s Over Berlin, I Highly Respect And Somehwat Idiolize These Two Men, May They Rest In Peace.

+Crappy Nappy It makes no difference what you think. The pilots of the Luftwaffe enabled Hitler for several years. For that there is no honor.

crosstimbers2 Just because he was in charge didn't mean they were evil genocidal thugs like him. Many had flown before the war.

You are right.Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler is a great story too.

Polpiv4tifish Gunther seems like he was a really cool guy. The way he tells the story of losing his thumb and other stories.

+Riesen Esel I know that great story and saw both of them. As a matter of fact I still have it. Another wonderful story of these brave warriors....gentlemen to the end.

Tragic yes, ridiculous no. There was nothing ridiculous about the need to stop the Nazis. Germany was in the grip of an evil regime that perpetrated unimaginable horror, and if ever a war was justified, this one was (from the Allied side that is). But as Gunther Rall showed, the Germans weren't all evil, cartoon villains. Most of the soldiers were ordinary young men who loved their country and answered the call when their country sent them to war. It's tragic that those young men were recruited into such an evil endeavor, and tragic that other young men had to go off to fight them, and sometimes die in doing so, especially as these men, if they met outside the conflict, might well find much in common with each other, and might well become great friends, just as you see with Shorty Rankin and Gunther Rall here.

war makes rich people richer, thats all. those bastards make us ordinary folk do their bidding

he is no no1....rall have only 272 victories ,no1 of all time was hartman with 357...ace of the aces...yenks pass him to soviets and he spent 10 years in prison...he came home in 1955,and also became jet pilot for new germany...rall is respected cuz his wife save some jews..he escort damaged b17 child killer bomber out of germany,so he not kill lot of yenks and brits,like harman did....he kils mostly soviets...malo citaj knjige...zidoljubac,zato je postao general...

It was a soldiers joke

because shorty shortened his thumb. that's why his nickname was shorty^^ id io t

"Bf109 - F104"...not just Rall, but >> Hartmann, Barkhorn, Krupinski, Steinhoff, Galland, also flew F104, -- Hartmann also flew F-106.....whilst Barkhorn also spent time in 'Vertol' Kestrel FGA.1 Jump jet, ...later to become the Harrier JJ.

Yes, you are right... But for me, Rall is always the best,as a pilot, as a person.

cabre4 well, from the words of the top German Aces themselves , it was said Barkhorn was also a very fine fellow...and he flew more post war modern variation jets than Rall.... but i consider any favouritism a silly childish game to play when discussing these top shelf pilots...they were all highly respected consummate professionals in their field.

No silly childish, I have my opinion, you the yours... At end, only a person that said the experiences as a pilot from 2nd War Word to the future... No aces, only a man.

cabre4 - Only a childish fool would try and seperate the skills of the top german Aces Hartmann, Barkhorn, Rall ,etc.... ..and try and claim one is better than the other.. take note that Gunther Rall never claimed to be better than the other top German aces, ...but know nothing idiots like you do.

Yeah, you're right. It takes no courage at all to get into a big, slow lumbering target like a heavy bomber, and fly hours over enemy territory, getting shot at by enemy fighters and by flak guns on the ground. No bravery at all is required to line up on a bombing run, flying straight and level so you can hit the target -- but making it easier for the anti aircraft batteries on the ground to get the range and put a shell right into you. It doesn't take courage to fly twenty five such missions, knowing you've got not much better than a 50/50 chance of surviving all those missions and going home. It doesn't take a brave man to keep going after seeing other bombers get shot down and seeing men he knows get killed. There's nothing brave at all about men who do this. God in heaven you deserve a special award for stupidity.

@@Hibernicus1968 these two guys was not bombers pilots...b17 bombers pilots was brave child killers.....carpet bombing dresden

@@sinkosav Yes, I'm aware they're not. The reply was meant merely to dismiss Rakic's absurd contention that there was nothing brave about flying bombing missions in WWII. That's nonsense. Your chances of getting as a bomber crewman were substantially higher than they were if you were in the infantry. That's why they had to limit crewmen and pilots in the USAAF to 25 missions -- more than that made getting killed virtually a certainty. It took a LOT of bravery to face that sort of danger. But, you're right, it was wrong for us and the British to bomb Germany. We should have left Germany alone so they could go on invading their neighbors and slaughtering millions in death camps. The world would have been much better off that way.

@@Hibernicus1968 sure,any man enter any plane have to be brave,and have balls made of steel...knowing that chance to return home are not so big...second...bombing civil cities are war crimes...man did you ask yourself what you done in US kill milions of native americans and using slaves.. or brits robing and invading almost all world in the past ...so what you will say to like example russians nuke britain and us..using that excuse ..cmon man

@@sinkosav "sure,any man enter any plane have to be brave,and have balls made of steel...knowing that chance to return home are not so big...second...bombing civil cities are war crimes..." Which, I remind you, the Germans perpetrated first. Too bad for them they only had two-engine medium bombers, and didn't invest in a strategic bombing arm. Sorry, but it was total war, on a scale never before seen in human history, and it we were sensible to fight it rather ruthlessly. There were no smart bombs back then that could accurately deliver bombs on military and industrial targets, with little or no collateral damage. We did the best we could with the tools we had to achieve very necessary war aims. William T. Sherman summed up the practical attitude to it almost a century earlier: “You might as well appeal against a thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war. War is cruelty, there is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” "...man did you ask yourself what you done in US kill milions of native americans and using slaves..." What do you mean "you"? I've never killed a single Native American, nor owned a slave. You also might want to brush up on your history: it's estimated that around 95-97% of the Amerindians killed in North and South America between 1492, and the very last battle against Apaches in 1927 died from Old World diseases to which they had no previous immunity. The number of Amerindians actively killed by whites (as opposed to dying of disease during the ENTIRE period of English colonization and US westward expansion, from 1588 to 1927 is estimated at under 100,000. Just to provide a comparison, the Chinese, in less than a single decade in the 1750s the Qing-dynasty Chinese launched a genocidal campaign against the Dzungar people in Mongolia, depopulating the steppes where they lived, and settled with millions of Qing subjects. Scholars estimate that 500,000 to 800,000 people, roughly 80% of the Dzungar population, was killed. Centuries earlier, the Mongols, under Genghis Khan and his successors, killed an estimated 40 MILLION people, which is thought to be fully a tenth of the ENTIRE human population living on earth at the time! None of this excuses crimes against the Amerindians, of course, but it does mean that our historical record is actually a LOT less bloody than most. As for slavery... Do I really need to remind you that slavery was UNIVERSAL among human civilizations throughout almost all of human history? It was practiced on EVERY continent, by EVERY civilization in history, from ancient times until very recently, when... WESTERN European civilization, embracing the values of the European Enlightenment, saw the rise of an abolitionist movement, beginning in the mid 18th century. It was eradicated in Europe, in the Northern US, and elsewhere in the West, and we fought a bloody civil war in the US to stamp it out here. At the same time this was happening, there was still a thriving slave trade in Africa, the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire. Eventually, Western powers used their military might to force an end to slavery in the rest of the world. Again, when you compare the US to actual other countries and civilizations in the real world, as opposed to some imaginary ideal, our record looks a hell of a lot better than that of most civilizations throughout history. "...or brits robing and invading almost all world in the past..." See above. As Empires go, the British one was far more benign than most. It was a lot less cruel than the Hittite, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, ancient Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, etc. I'm sorry, but I see no basis in fact for singling out America or Britain as especially culpable in this regard. Again, while this should not be seen as an apology for imperialism, their record is a LOT better than some. "...so what you will say to like example russians nuke britain and us..using that excuse ..cmon man" I honestly can't even tell what you're trying to say here.

Maybe, but I still have much respect for them, because they fought for something meaningful, at least for them. And this is honorable, to fight for the things you love and to protect them

Diego D I got a personal tour of her (Thunderbird) about a week ago at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston. They were doing a preflight and I mentioned that my dad had been a BTG on one in WWII. There was a lady on the preflight team and she asked me if I'd like to go inside. Well yeeeeah! So in we went and I got a lot of great pics inside. Not the regular tour either. She let me crawl in every nook and cranny. Wasn't easy at 64 but I couldn't pass it up. In the movies they look a lot bigger on the inside. You spend more time crawling than walking inside one.

Rikki0 Seen many interviews with Gunther Rall. Even though he and my Dad may have tried to kill each other it's impossible not to like him.

Me too!!!!!

MAXZONE47 Air to air combat is very rare nowadays which is a good thing.

+winkerdude. Was it Lowenbrau or maybe Becks...so many things it depends on, such as whether he was blonde or dark etc. and his alcohol content.

"Was it Lowenbrau or maybe Becks."...WTF?..only two german fighter aces with 300+ count, Erich Hartmann 352, Gerhard Barkhorn 301, next was Gunther Rall 275....then numerous other german aces with scores in the 200s.

there are several Luftwaffe pilots which worked for the Bundeswehr Luftwaffe.

winkerdude Unless he was Eric Hartmann the guy was lying.