Leutnant Karl Gallwitz (18 August 1895 – 17 May 1984) was a World War I

flying ace A flying ace, fighter ace or air ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down five or more enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The exact number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an ace is varied, but is usually co ...

credited with ten aerial victories.

Early life

Karl Gallwitz was born in

Sigmaringen Sigmaringen ( Swabian: ''Semmerenga'') is a town in southern Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Situated on the upper Danube, it is the capital of the Sigmaringen district. Sigmaringen is renowned for its castle, Schloss Sigmaringen ...

, the German Empire, in 1895. He visited the Gymnasium-school in

Nordhausen Nordhausen may refer to: * Nordhausen (district), a district in Thuringia, Germany ** Nordhausen, Thuringia, a city in the district **Nordhausen station, the railway station in the city * Nordhouse, a commune in Alsace (German: Nordhausen) * Narost ...

Aerial service

Gallwitz originally flew a Roland D.III for artillery cooperation units on the Russian Front, shooting down two observation balloons with FA 37, before a brief assignment to Jasta 29. On 24 August 1917, he joined Jasta Boelcke in France. He scored three times in October; the last one, on the 27th, was over

Arthur Rhys-Davids Arthur Percival Foley Rhys-Davids, (26 September 1897 – 27 October 1917) was a British flying ace of the First World War. Rhys-Davids was born in 1897 to a distinguished family. His father was a professional academic and his mother a prolifi ...

. He started over again in 1918, scoring five more times, including bringing down British aces Robert Kirby Kirkman and John Herbert Hedley. Gallwitz finished out his tally of ten on 21 April 1918,The Aerodrome website http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/gallwitz.php Retrieved on 20 April 2010 and crashed soon thereafter. Once he recuperated from his injuries, he was assigned to Inspekteur der Flieger.

Postwar

From 1919 he studied Mechanical engineering in Braunschweig, Danzig and Stuttgart. He later was a professor for agricultural machinery at the university of

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

, where he taught from 1936 to 1965.

Sources of information

References

* ''Above the Lines: The Aces and Fighter Units of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps 1914 - 1918'' Norman L. R. Franks, et al. Grub Street, 1993. , . 1895 births 1984 deaths German World War I flying aces Prussian Army personnel People from Sigmaringen People from the Province of Hohenzollern Military personnel from Baden-Württemberg Recipients of the Iron Cross (1914), 1st class Academic staff of the University of Göttingen {{germany-airforce-bio-stub