Marcel Albert flew and fought under three flags during World War II: First with the air force of his native France, then with the Royal Air Force in Britain, before becoming a high-scoring fighter ace flying Soviet “Yak” fighters against the Germans on the Eastern Front with the Normandie-Niémen Regiment.
This is how French fighter ace Marcel Albert described a kill against a German Fw 190 while flying a Soviet Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter. The battle took place in the skies over what was then East Prussia on the Eastern Front between Germany and Russia (an area that is now part of the province of Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). This was one of seven victories credited to him during that month alone.
Pilot training in France
Marcel Olivier Albert was born into a working-class family in Paris in November 1917 during World War One, a war in which his father fought, was injured, gassed, and became a POW. When Marcel was only 16, his father died young as a result of his experiences in the war.
Albert began his working life as a teenager, driving a truck to earn money for his family, which owned a small farm near Orly Airport. He then became an apprentice with the Renault car company, based just outside Paris, training as a mechanic and building gearboxes.
Fascinated by aviation, Albert decided to join the French Air Force, the Armée de l’Air, to become a military pilot. He passed the entry examination at the Sorbonne in Paris and was one of 156 men from France and its colonies who enlisted on that entry. He was sent to the École Caudron, one of five schools in Paris where military pilots received initial training.
In May 1938 he
