Franz Schall, born on June 1, 1918 in Austria, served as an AAA gunner until 1940. Trained as a fighter pilot, he was posted to I./JG 52 on the Eastern Front in February 1943. He had a slow start, achieving his seventh victory on July 15, 1943. On November 11, 1943, he was shot down and injured by AAA near Kerch. His rise to fame began only in 1944. On August 31, 1944, he achieved his 106th victory by claiming thirteen Soviet aircraft shot down. When he was posted to Me 262-equipped Kommando Nowotny in October 1944, his score stood at 117. On October 7, 1944, Leutnants Franz Schall and Helmut Lennartz scored the first victories of Me 262-equipped Kommando Nowotny when they shot down two U.S. 44 BG Liberators. On November 6, 1944, Schall achieved his next victory against a Thunderbolt. Two days later-during the mission when the unit commander Major Walter Nowotny was killed-Schall destroyed three Mustangs, the last piloted by 357 FG's Warren Corwin, but then both engines of his Me 262 seized. The helpless German pilot was attacked from above by US 357 FG's Lieutenant James W. Kenney, and Schall was lucky to survive and bail out. In 1945, he was posted to JG 7, and when he was killed during a landing accident on April 10, 1945, he had shot down sixteen Allied aircraft while flying an Me 262.