Carl "Charly" Degelow 5 January 1891 - 9 November 1970, Pour le Merite, Royal House Order of Hohenzollern,Iron Cross was a German fighter pilot during World War I. He was credited with 30 victories, and was the last person to win the military Pour le Merite Carl Degelow was born in Münsterdorf, Schleswig-Holstein, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Before World War I broke out, Degelow worked in the United States as an industrial chemist. His specialty was the manufacture of cement, and he was known to have visited Chicago and El Paso ..... as a result of his travels, he was fluent in English. He returned to Germany just before World War I erupted and enlisted in Nassauischen Infanterie-Regiment Nr 88. Degelow initially served with distinction in this infantry regiment in both France and Russia. He was seriously wounded in the arm in Russia in 1915, and commissioned in July 1915 while he was still hospitalized He transferred to the air service in July, 1916. His first assignment was to FA(A)216 as an artillery spotter at the beginning of 1917 flying Albatros CV two seaters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Degelow I think I would like this book ..... One of the most noteworthy German fighter pilots of World War I was Leutnant der Reserve Carl Degelow, whose squadron of mostly black Fokker D.VII fighters posed a formidable threat to some of Britain’s most celebrated air units on the Western Front. Degelow had a unique approach to aerial combat which fascinated the author, Peter Kilduff, so much that in 1979 he wrote Germany’s Last Knight of the Air about his exploits, a book long out of print. During the intervening 30 years Kilduff has obtained new information and original photos, plus copies of significant German archival material and documentation which shed much new light on this legendary ace. Black Fokker Leader is a completely new work with unpublished material about Degelow and his comrades - how he was almost court-martialled; how his career was saved by Carl Josef Jacobs; how Degelow helped Willy Rosenstein escape from Nazi Germany, and much more. Plus new insights into men like Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Degelow’s wing commander in WWI; and V-2 rocket chief General Hans Jeschonnek, a Degelow protégé in 1918.
