Kurt Küppers
German flying ace
Leutnant Kurt Küppers was a World War I flying ace credited with six aerial victories.
Biography
Early life
Kurt Küppers was born in 1894, birthplace unknown. An early interest in aviation led him to gain pilot's license No. 492, granted on 22 August 1913.
Service in military aviation
Küppers was serving in the Luftstreitkräfte when World War I began. However, his first known assignment was as a pilot of two-seater reconnaissance aircraft in the vicinity of Dunkirk in 1916. After that, he served on the Eastern Front with Flieger-Abteilung (Flier Detachment) 45, a recon unit. Although it goes unmentioned in records, he must have undergone fighter pilot's training, because his next posting was to a fighter squadron, Jagdstaffel 6 (Jasta 6), in March 1917. Between 16 March and 12 July 1917, he scored four aerial victories.
However, in August 1917, Küppers transferred to Kampfstaffel (Tactical Bomber Squadron) 14 as a bomber pilot; there he flew a Gotha bomber to convey his friend Fritz Lorenz on several raids on England.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kurt Küppers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.