Career
The Knight"s Cross of the Iron Cross was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership. As a Gefreiter flying with I/JG 27 Werfft participated in the Battle of Britain. The two air victories which he scored against Royal Air Force Hurricane fighters on 27 September 1940 were probably his first.
Werrft served with JG 27 in North Africa during 1941-1942, claiming five kills over the Desert Air Force.
Werfft was commissioned as a Leutnant (Lieutenant) in late 1942. Service over Greece and the Balkans followed in 1943, where he claimed the destruction of a P-38 Lightning and three United States Army Air Force heavy bombers.
Werfft claimed 11 more heavies in 1944, he was a Hauptmann (Captain) by October 1944. He was awarded the Ritterkreuz on 28 January 1945.
At the end of World World War II he was a Major and gruppenkommandeur of III./JG 27, flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 fighter ("Yellow One") with a green fuselage band signifying dedication to Reich strategic airspace defence.
He also had a total of 26 air kills. On 3 May 1945 he disbanded his III./JG 27 in the Austrian Alps near Saalbach, together with the acting unit commander Hauptmann Emil Clade, eventually becoming a prisoner of war of the United States. Returning to Austria after his release from captivity, Werfft established InterChemie GmbH, a Vienna-based pharmaceutical and chemical limited liability enterprise, in 1948.
Among the first commercial activities of the fledgling trading company in this difficult post-war period was the Austrian sales representation for certain American Cyanamid products.
By 1961 the firm had been restructured into a successor company, Werfft-Chemie GmbH. lieutenant was taken over by the Austrian Sanochemia Pharmazeutika Group in 1983 and was subsequently converted to a purely veterinary medicine company. The legacy of Werfft-Chemie survives under the name Alvetra University
Werfft AG, a Sanochemia company with subsidiaries in several central and eastern European countries. Bibliography.