Heinrich Sturm (12 June 1920 – 22 December 1944) was a German Luftwaffe military aviator during World War II, a fighter ace credited with 158 enemy aircraft shot down in an unknown number of combat missions.

Born in Dieburg, Sturm joined the military service in the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany and was trained as a fighter pilot.

JG 52 was based on the central sector of the Eastern Front, where he claimed his first aerial victory on 16 October 1941.

[3] At the time, JG 52 was based on the Eastern Front, supporting Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

[4] On 2 October, German forces launched Operation Typhoon, the failed strategic offensive to capture Moscow.

[1] Sturm claimed his first aerial victory with the Gruppenstab, and tenth in total, on 13 February when he shot down a Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3 fighter south of Novorossiysk.

[10] Sturm claimed three LaGG-3 fighters shot down on 15 April near Abinskaya, taking his total to 22 aerial victories.

[15] That day, the Gruppe moved to an airfield at Karlivka where they fought in the aftermath of the Belgorod–Kharkov offensive operation, also referred to as the fourth Battle of Kharkov.

[18] On 5 November, Sturm again became an "ace-in-a-day" when he shot down an Il-2 ground attack aircraft and five Yakovlev Yak-1 fighters over the Soviet bridge heads.

[19] On 13 December, Sturm claimed his last aerial victory of 1943 when he shot down a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter east of Eltingen, present-day part of Kerch.

[24] A few weeks later on 16 April, he was wounded badly by bomb debris in an attack on the airfield at Chersonesus at Sevastopol on the Crimea.

Taking off for another sortie from Csór that day, one of his Bf 109 G-6/U4 (Werknummer 442036—factory number) aircraft's landing gear struts hit a truck, killing him in the accident.

[31] Spick lists Sturm with 157 aerial victories claimed in an unknown number of combat missions, all of them on the Eastern Front.

[33] According to Prien, Stemmer, Balke, and Bock, it is currently impossible to verify the exact number of aerial victories claimed by Sturm.

[34] The authors Daniel and Gabor Horvath compared Soviet enemy loss reports to Sturm's claims over Hungary.

In the timeframe 18 October to 22 December 1944, Sturm claimed 13 aerial victories, while the authors found eight matching Soviet losses, a corroboration of 62%.