Original Item: One-of-a-kind. The Sting of the Black Tulip 1200 Victory Edition #187 of 850! Released in 1997, this was the first in the now legendary ‘Hartmann Trilogy’. Unsurprisingly it sold out on the day of release and has remained in constant demand on the secondary market ever since.
Legend has it that the moment a Russian pilot saw the Bf109 with the distinctive Black Tulip painted on the nose, he would know who the pilot was and radio his colleagues with a warning that the world’s most-feared fighter Ace was on the warpath and their best chance of survival was to depart the scene quickly and without contest. That Ace was, of course, Erich Hartmann who, in just over 2 1/2 years, scored 352 aerial victories to easily become the top-scoring Ace in history. It is a feat unlikely to be replicated.
Robert Taylor’s portrayal of this legendary Pilot depicts the 7 August 1943 as the Ace scores the first of seven victories in a day.
Every print in this superb edition is individually signed by the artist Robert Taylor as well as by Erich Hartmann and in paying tribute to the greatest Ace of them all, has also been signed by a glittering array of top-scoring Aces that include such legendary names as Adolf Dickfeld (136 victories), Peter Duttmann (152 victories), Walter Krupinski (197 victories), Gunther Rall (275 victories) and Walter Wolfrum (137…
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