I don’t know whose deicision it was to disarm our own, but it was pathetic. IMO, they put the Sec Def. in harm’s way.
Pathetic? The Nazis treated their soldiers better than that:
On 23 August, Luftwaffe fighter pilot Erich Hartmann claimed eight victories in three combat missions bringing his score to 290 victories. Hartmann passed the 300 kill mark on 24 August 1944, a day on which he shot down 11 aircraft in two combat missions, bringing the number of aerial victories to an unprecedented 301 victories. He was immediately grounded by Luftwaffe chief of staff Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who was fearful of the effect on German morale should such a hero be lost. Hartmann, however, later successfully lobbied to be reinstated as a combat pilot.
He became one of only 27 German soldiers in World War II to receive the Diamonds to his Knight's Cross. Hartmann was summoned to the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler's military headquarters near Rastenburg, to receive the coveted award from Hitler personally. On arrival, he was asked to surrender his side arm — a security measure caused by the aftermaths of the failed assassination attempt on 20 July 1944. Hartmann refused and threatened to decline the Diamonds if he were not trusted to carry his pistol. After consulting Oberst Nicolaus von Below, Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, Hartmann was allowed to keep his side arm and accepted the Diamonds.
Erich Hartmann flew 1,404 combat missions during World War II, resulting in 825 engagements,[51] and was never shot down. Hartmann was never wounded and never bailed out due to damage inflicted by enemy pilots. His kill tally included some 200 various single-engined Soviet-built fighters, more than 80 US-built P-39s, 15 Il-2 ground attack aircraft, and 10 twin-engined medium bombers. It is often said that he was more proud of the fact that he had never lost a wingman in combat than he was about his rate of kills.
After the war and following imprisonment by the Soviets he returned to West Germany, reentered military service in the Bundeswehr and became an officer in the West German Air Force, from which he retired in 1970.
Erich Hartmann died on 20 September 1993, at the age of 71 in Weil im Schönbuch, Germany.