Erich Hartmann flew over 1,400 combat missions, engaged in aerial combat more than 800 times, and was never shot down by direct enemy fire, yet the closest he came to an early death was being grounded for showing off. This episode looks beyond his credited 352 aerial victories to examine the methods that kept him alive, from the glider training his mother gave him as a boy to the four-step mantra of see, decide, attack, break that turned him from a dogfighter into an aerial sniper who fired from 20 meters or less.

The episode follows the March 1942 grounding that put his roommate in the plane that crashed, his panicked first combat mission, and the mentorship of Edmund Rossmann, whose injured arm forced him to develop a standoff tactic. It covers the Black Tulip nose art that backfired when Soviet pilots learned to avoid it, the historical  ...