G%C3%BCnther Josten

Gnther Josten was a German Luftwaffe military aviator during World War II, a fighter ace credited with 178 enemy aircraft shot down in 420 combat missions, all of which claimed over the Eastern Front. Following World War II, he served in the newly established West German Luftwaffe in the Bundeswehr.

Josten was born onNovember 1921 in Rhynern, today a borough of Hamm, in the Province of Westphalia during the time of the Weimar Republic. He was the second son, following his older brother Reinhard, of Johannes Josten and his wife Gertraud. His father was the Protestant pastor of Klleda in Thuringia. In October 1935, the Reichsluftfahrtministerium decided to build an airfield at Klleda which influenced him and his brother to become an aviator. Josten attended the boarding school Schulpforta. The school was made into a National Political Institutes of Education , a secondary school founded under the recently established Nazi state, onAugust 1935. The goal of the Napola schools was to raise a new generation for the political, military and administrative leadership of the Third Reich. OnMay 1938, Josten made his first rubber powered flight on a DFSglider aircraft with the National Socialist Flyers Corps of Naumburg.

Source: Wikipedia