This is my skin of Hans Ulrich Rudel's Ju 87G-2 as flown in the winter of 1944/45. The yellow V on the wing is a theater ID applied to aircraft flying on the Hungarian part of the Eastern front. A coat of white wash has been applied in irregular patches as winter camouflage.
Rudel spent the early years of the war flying recon, training or in non-combat roles. His combat debut as a Stuka pilot came in June 1941 at the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. On 23rd September he was one of two pilots to sink the Russian battleship Marat in Leningrad harbour. In 1943, having already flown over 1000 combat sorties, he began flying the anti-tank G version of the Stuka. By the end of the war he had flown 2,530 combat sorties in Stukas and occasionally FW 190s. He destroyed 519 tanks, a battleship, two cruisers, a destroyer, as well as bridges and numerous other vehicles and artillery pieces. He also shot down nine enemy aircraft. He was shot down 32 times by AA fire and became Germany's most highly decorated combatant of the war. Rudel was also an unapologetic Nazi who, after being released from prison post war, wrote a book about how Hitler was a genius and had been let down by his generals.
