Josef Jennewein


Josef Jennewein was a German alpine skier and world champion. During World War II, he served first in the Wehrmacht and then in the Luftwaffe, and was credited with 86 air victories. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany.
Jennewein was born on 21 November 1919 at St Anton in the Tyrolean Alps, Austria. He became a world champion in the combined event in Zakopane in 1939, and received silver medals in slalom and in downhill. In 1941 Jennewein participated at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships 1941 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy and won gold medals in downhill and the combined event. In 1946, the results were cancelled by the FIS because of the limited number of participants from only German-friendly countries during World War II.

World War II

Jennewein joined the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot and was posted to 4./JFS 5. He became an ace, claiming five air victories on the Western Front. On his fourth combat mission on 20 September 1941, he claimed his first victories over three Spitfire fighters and on 15 October he was credited with two more Spitfire kills. Subsequently he was posted to 2./JG 51 and transferred on the Eastern Front. By the end of July 1942, when he was posted to serve as a flight instructor, he had added 12 Russian aircraft to his tally. He returned to 2./JG 51 before the end of the year, starting a surprising sequence of multiple victories . On January 18, 1943, as a Feldwebel, flying a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 as a wingman of Leutnant Joachim Brendel, he attacked a formation of nine Petlyakov Pe-2 bombers from 202 BAP, in the area of Velikiye Luki, and claimed five kills in five minutes.
On the Eastern Front, he claimed another 76 victories, for a total of 81. In the entire war, Jennewein flew 271 missions and shot down 86 enemy planes.
He went missing in action following combat east of Orel on 27 July 1943.

World War II awards