CLOSE SUPPORT

With Staffelkapitän Otto Kittel and the Fw190s of 3./JG54 providing close support, leading Panzer Ace Oberleutnant Otto Carius prepares to lead Tiger tanks from the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion against advancing Russian armour in southern Latvia during the summer of 1944.

On 10 July 1944 Hitler moved to his ‘Wolf’s Lair’ headquarters at near Rastenburg in East Prussia, the same day as a fresh Russian assault was launched into the Baltic states. Despite the Allied landings in Normandy a few weeks before, it was the Russian advances along the Eastern Front that were of even more concern to the Führer. His ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ might be crumbling but not without a brutal fight.

Employing his skills as one of aviation art’s best master draughtsmen, Richard Taylor skilfully depicts the run-up to one of the war’s most dramatic encounters when two Tiger I tanks led by legendary panzer Ace Oberleutnant Otto Carius from the 502nd Heavy Panzer Battalion knocked out 17 Russian tanks near Daugavpils in southern Latvia. The encounter lasted less than 20 minutes – an achievement to rival Michael Wittmann’s legendary ambush during the battle for Villers-Bocage a month earlier in Normandy. Richard prepares us for the coming encounter as, watched by an enquiring Latvian hound, Carius prepares to advance with his Tigers towards the Russian lines. Briefly appearing overhead he’s given some much-appreciated support by the Fw190s of 3./JG54 led by Staffelkapitän Otto Kittel, one of the Luftwaffe’s highest-scoring Aces on the Eastern Front. Awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves – the Oak Leaves bestowed on him personally by Hitler on 5 May 1944 – Kittel spent his entire flying career with JG54 ‘Green Hearts’ on the Eastern Front. He was the most successful and highest-scoring fighter-pilot killed in action during the war and by the end of hostilities his name still ranked fourth in the list of highest-scoring Aces with a total of 267 victories from 583 combat missions.