Staffelführer
            Walter Karjus
                    

Joining the German war effort early, Walter flew many missions as an observer earning great distinction and losing a hand to a burst flak shell in the process.
Undeterred he had a prosthetic fashioned into a hook and applied for pilot training.

This fighting spirit appealed to the master, Manfred von Richtofen,who invited him to join his elite squadron, Jasta 11.

After the baron's death Jasta 11 was led by the bullyish ace pilot herman Göring and Walter was dismissed to lead Jasta 24 which he did until the War's end.

1919...

leading an orderly retreat of his unit to germany after unwillingly surrendering their machines to the allies, Walter stumbles across a deserted aerodrome with twelve pristine new experimental Kondor monoplanes hidden in hangars.
hastily re-fuelled and armed before the allied occupation of the area he and his pilots speed to Berlin which is besieged by communists and relieves the exhausted Göring and jasta 11 who have achieved a fearsome reputation for the aerial defence of the city, mercilessly strafing and bombing the Russian troops at the city gates and clearing the skies of their outdated ex-british aircraft.

Göring, now drug addicted and bloated with
self-importance, immediately commandeers the finest of the new machines for his pilots and has the best painted in his usual white "avenging angel" livery.
Beside himself with impotent rage, walter disappears into the city's heart to drown his sorrows.
There, in a tavern he meets a war-disabled engineer who, AFTER MAny schnapps, suggests he create a new prosthetic arm and hand for this brave hero. After a few weeks the new arm is delivered. In a painful operation , only partly anaesthetised, walter's tendons are connected to the operating rods and levers in the strange contraption and, as he hazily recovers, it's creator disappears back into the bowels of the city...


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