Heinz Hackler was listed as missing in action near Antwerp, Belgium after being hit by Allied flak during Operation Bodenplatte.

Hackler was born on 14 December 1918 in Siegen, at the time in the Province of Westphalia of the Weimar Republic.

That day, Hackler claimed his first aerial victory when he shot down a Hawker Hurricane fighter near Larissa.

Gruppe was moved to Bucharest and was located in the sector of Heeresgruppe Süd (Army Group South).

[6] On 25 September 1941, Hackler claimed his fifth aerial victory, a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 fighter in the combat area near Perekop.

Hackler was credited with shooting down two Polikarpov I-16 fighters, two Ilyushin Il-2 ground attack aircraft and a Petlyakov Pe-2 bomber.

[9] On 15 October, while the 11th Army was preparing for the attack on the Crimea Peninsula in what would become the Crimean campaign, Hackler shot down a Pe-2 bomber on mission to Armiansk and Ishun, located approximately 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) southeast of Krasnoperekopsk.

He succeeded Leutnant Wilhelm Mockel who had temporarily replaced Hauptmann Helmut Goedert after he had been wounded in combat on 31 May.

The Luftwaffe grid map (Jägermeldenetz) covered all of Europe, western Russia and North Africa and was composed of rectangles measuring 15 minutes of latitude by 30 minutes of longitude, an area of about 360 square miles (930 km2).