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PEEBLES PROFILES
EPISODE XIII: Erich Loewenhardt

Loewenhardt was born in Breslau on April 7, 1897. He received his education at a military school in Lichterfelde.

He was only seventeen when hostilities erupted in August 1914, and Loewenhardt was assigned to the German Army’s Infantry Regiment No. 141. He saw action on the Eastern Front and remained on duty as a standard bearer for his regiment as it fought in the Battle of Tannenberg. As a reward for his courage, Loewenhardt became a commisioned soldier on October 2, 1914. Four weeks later, he was both wounded near Łódź and decorated with the Iron Cross, Second Class.

After convalescing, he returned to his unit in the Carpathians. In early 1915 he received the Iron Cross, First Class for saving the lives of five wounded men. Loewenhardt then transferred to the Alpine Corps on the Italian Front. However, he fell ill and was removed from service as unfit for duty.

After five months of recuperation, Loewenhardt volunteered for the Imperial German Army Air Service and qualified as an aerial observer. He completed his pilot’s training in 1916. Service in two-seaters with Flieger-Abteilung-Artillerie (Flier Detachment Artillery) 265 soon followed.

In January 1917, Loewenhardt underwent conversion training for fighters. He joined a fighter squadron, Jagdstaffel 10 in March 1917.

On March 24th, Loewenhardt scored his first confirmed aerial victory, destroying an enemy observation balloon over Recicourt.

Loewenhardt was an aggressive, skilled fighter whose score steadily grew. During this period, he flew Albatros and Pfalz planes. By the end of September, Erich Loewenhardt was an ace.

He survived a forced landing on September 20th with a minor wound. The next day, he shot down his fifth victim. He posted two more claims in October (one of which was confirmed).

On November 6th, his aircraft’s lower wing was damaged during combat over Winkel Saint Eloi in Belgium; a dud anti-aircraft shell smashed his left wingtip without exploding. Loewenhardt pulled his craft out of the resulting spin at a mere fifteen meters altitude with his wheels down, and he bounced into a tumbling wreck. He exited the wreckage shaken, but unharmed. On the last day of November, Loewenhardt closed out his year with his eighth confirmed victory (four balloons and four airplanes).

Loewenhardt scored two more wins in January 1918 (a balloon and a Bristol F.2 fighter). In March, he added five more! On the first day of April (just before his 21st birthday), he was appointed to command Jasta 10.

The next month, Jasta 10 was re-equipped with new Fokker D.VIIs… and Loewenhardt continued to score. On May 10th, he destroyed an observation balloon for his twentieth victory, which made him eligible for the Pour le Merite. The next day, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross with Swords of the House Order of Hohenzollern. Loewenhardt also received the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Military Merit Cross. The Pour le Merite (also known as the Blue Max) came on May 31, 1918, when Loewenhardt’s tally had reached twenty-four.

By now, Loewenhardt was locked into an “ace race” with Ernst Udet and Lothar von Richthofen for the honor of being the top scoring ace in their fighter wing. The rivalry between Loewenhardt and the younger Richthofen was a friendly one, as they often flew as wingmen. Jasta 10 belonged to “The Flying Circus”, and when the wing commander’s spot became available on June 29, 1918, Oberleutnant Loewenhardt was tapped for temporary command. By then, his tally stood at twenty-seven. When he surrendered the command on July 6th, it had risen to thirty-four. By the end of the month, Loewenhardt’s total was forty-eight (nine balloons and thirty-nine airplanes).

On August 8, 1918, the Allies launched the war’s final offensive against the Germans (the Battle of Amiens). The British Royal Air Force led the assault, and Loewenhardt downed three of their planes. On the 9th, he shot down two more.

On the 10th, flying with a badly sprained ankle, Erich Loewenhardt launched his yellow Fokker D.VII on a mid-day sortie leading a patrol heavily weighted with rookie pilots. He encountered the No. 56 Squadron of the RAF and shot down a Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a over Chaulnes, France for his fifty-fourth victory. In the aftermath of the combat, he collided with another German pilot: Leutnant Alfred Wenz from Jasta 11.

Loewenhardt’s Fokker’s landing gear slammed the upper right wing on Wenz’s D.VII. Both planes were equipped with parachutes, and both pilots bailed out.

However, Erich Loewenhardt’s chute failed to open and he fell to his death! He was only twenty-one years old.

Having scored fourteen of his victories in the Pfalz D.III, he was the most successful pilot in said type.

Erich Loewenhardt’s final number of 54 victories placed him third among Imperial Germany’s air aces in the Great War. Only Ernst Udet (62) and Manfred von Richthofen (80) had more.