Wings of War

This is a rare day-to-day account by a young German squadron leader in Jagdstaffel 35 during the grim last year of the war. Originally published in 1933, it provides minute descriptions of kills, losses, and the Germans’ step-by-step retreat in the face of increasingly overwhelming Allied forces in the air.

Brutally honest and vividly written, Stark’s account of the end-game of the Imperial German Army Air Service provides an intimate, front-row glimpse of the death-throes of a once feared corps. This book also contains reproductions of some of the author’s paintings depicting life on the Western Front.

Table of Contents

I Flying a Scout Machine
II With Jagdstaffel XXXIV on the Verdun Front
III The Amiens Offensive
IV May, 1918, in the Somme area
V Leading Jagdstaffel XXXV
VI On leave
VII The English Offensive
VIII Cambrai becomes a battle area
IX Idle days in the Vosges
X Fighting on a wavering front
XI Is it the end?
XII The end

After the war Stark, like many of the young men whose lives had been torned and transformed by the conflict, became somewhat of an adventurer. He flew for a while with Polizei-Fliegerstaffel 1 at Schleissheim, then as a test-pilot for Dornier. After that he went to South Africa only to return to his homeland in 1926 - a hard year of inflationand soaring unemployment - where he painted advertaisements, and even became farmer for a short while. Pressed by financiel difficulties and driven by his strong desire to fly again, Stark joined the secret German airforce with the rank of Oberleutnant. During the second World War he commanded an airfield in Italy. He died in 1982.