In the spring of 1945, Hauptmann Joachim Brendel's, III./JG 51 was located in the small German resistance-area, kept by the order of Hitler, in Eastern Prussia. Led by Jagdfliegerführer Otto Weiss, nicknamed "Butcher-Weiss", III./JG 51 was forced to completely senseless missions against a superior enemy. Among the antagonists on the Soviet side, in this area, was the French fighter-pilots of the Air-Regiment "Normandie-Niemen", equipped with the Yak-9. "Normandie-Niemen" undertook 869 missions which 210 German aircraft were shot down and 42 of its own pilots were killed. In the spring of 1945, the III./JG 51 lost, 27 pilots. One of the most successful pilots of III./JG 51 during this period was Feldwebel Horst Petzschler, who downed 22 Soviet aircraft in the last months of the war.
When the unit on May 4, 1945, was to leave Eastern Prussia in order to - like most of the Luftwaffe - transfer to Schleswig-Holstein, Petzschler instead flew to neutral Sweden. His arrival in Southern Sweden was quite spectacular, as Petzschler undertook a successful dead stick landing, due to running out of gas, approaching the airport Bulltofta. When the war was over, the Swedish Authorities handed over Petzschler to the Soviet Union where he was kept as POW for four years.