Hans Thurner with His Dog and Crew in the Cockpit

A little further west from Woolston, England, the Royal Navy base at Portland came under attack from the Heinkel 111s of III.Gruppe / Kampfgeschwader 55 (KG55) on 15 September 1940, and among the units taking part was the 8th Staffel of that KG55 formation. Although we cannot know if he specifically took part in that raid, Leutnant Hans Thurner (seated here at the controls) of an 8./KG55 He 111 became one of the most highly decorated Luftwaffe bomber pilots of the war and took part in the Battle of Britain and The Blitz. In this posed photograph, he is seen with his Great Dane dog and two crew members. Hans Thurner was born on 24 October 1918 in Innsbruck, Austria, and entered the Luftwaffe in 1938 as a Fahnenjunker, receiving training as a Kampfflieger before being commissioned Leutnant and assigned to the 8. Staffel of Kampfgeschwader 55. In the autumn of 1940 he flew numerous sorties against England, and from June 1941 he took part in operations over the Soviet Union. On 6 August 1941 he was awarded the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes as Leutnant and pilot in the III. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 55 in recognition of 132 combat sorties flown against England between 5 July 1940 and 31 May 1941, together with further successful missions on the Eastern Front. In September 1942 he transferred as Oberleutnant and Technischer Offizier to Kampfgeschwader 6, with which he again operated against England, later flying in the Mediterranean theatre from the summer of 1943 and returning to raids over England in 1944. He received the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold and, early in 1944, was appointed Kommandeur of the I. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 6, being promoted to Hauptmann on 1 May 1944. Thurner’s luck finally ran out when he was killed on 11 June 1944, despite the lucky horseshoe hanging in his cockpit. On that day, while flying a Junkers Ju 188 A-2 coded 3E+EB in defence against the Allied invasion of Normandy, he and his crew failed to return from a mission and were reported missing; his remains were later recovered approximately ten kilometres southeast of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, and he was buried at the German war cemetery at La Cambe. By the time of his death he had completed more than 500 Feindflüge. Posthumously, on 17 September 1944, he was awarded the Eichenlaub to the Ritterkreuz (the 587th such award) as Hauptmann and Gruppenkommandeur of the I. Gruppe of Kampfgeschwader 6 for his many successful sorties on the Eastern Front, the Italian front, over England in the first months of 1944, and finally on the Invasion front.

 

Source :
"Luftwaffe Bombers of the Blitz 1940-1941" by Andy Saunders (page 30)