by Adam Makos
Luetzow’s face grew cold at the mention of Goering’s name. Luetzow had, in fact, given Goering his Air Force–wide nickname, “the Fat One.” Luetzow hated Goering because he was an ignoble man who now sat at the head of the once noble Air Force.* Goering had led the fifty thousand brownshirts—The Party’s thugs—who had “monitored” the polling booths during the 1933 elections, intimidating voters and suppressing opposition.
Roedel interrupted Galland to remind him that II Group was still fresh to the theater and that Lieutenant Kientsch had the unit’s first success against a B-17. Prodded by Roedel, Willi told the story of downing the B-17. He shocked everyone by confessing that the B-17 he had destroyed had actually been a straggler. Hit by flak, it fell from formation and he finished it. Franz suddenly wished Willi could filter his thoughts with as much talent as he flew with.
Galland assured Roedel that he was not questioning his leadership. Rather, he simply needed answers from his pilots. Galland got to the point and asked Franz and Willi again, “Why did you let the bombers escape?”
“Because we fired from too far away because of their defensive fire,” Willi admitted.
“Ah,” Galland said. “Goering calls that ‘cowardice,’ but I personally believe it is a matter of tactics.”
His ire raised at the hint of cowardice, Franz interrupted the general and said, “Sir, it’s the tail approach that’s the problem—it’s all we’re taught and it’s stupid.”
The three Knight’s Cross holders at the table turned toward Franz. Willi looked straight ahead like a ghost. Galland leaned across the table, his cross dangling like a threat. The rumor was that Galland’s cross was so heavy due to its twenty-four embedded diamonds that he needed to wear a woman’s garter under his collar to support it. Galland let a smile curl and said, “It’s about time someone agrees with me! But tell me, why do you hold this opinion of yours?”
“The tail approach will only get us killed,” Franz said. “It is too slow. We need to attack from the front, with speed.”
Galland banged his fist on the table. “I told my group commanders the same thing—‘Lead your men from head-on, in close formation!’ But they said the new approach would be too fast.”
“A good pilot will find a way,” Franz said.
Galland’s eyes lit up and he agreed. He was a brave pilot and valued that characteristic in others.
Galland gave his cigar another light and seemed to mellow. Seeing the general satisfied, Roedel motioned for Franz and Willi to leave. They saluted Galland. Before departing, Franz wheeled and asked Galland a question that had been burning in his mind since the Spanish Civil War.
“Sir, is it true that in Spain you flew in your bathing suit?”
Galland laughed and nodded. Franz explained that he had heard the rumor when he was flying transports into Spain. “We delivered your bullets,” Franz said.
Galland smiled. “Pull up a chair,” he ordered, motioning for Franz and Willi to sit.
“Seems we’ve got an old comrade here,” he said to Luetzow with a grin.
ALTHOUGH GALLAND HAD summoned Franz and Willi to call them on the carpet, by the end of their visit he had offered Franz a cigar and told Franz to call him “Dolfo,” as his friends did. Franz discovered that he and Galland had a common bond, albeit tragic. Both had lost a brother in the war. Galland told a story of how he and his two younger brothers, Paul and Wutz, loved playing with electric trains as boys. Both of his younger brothers became fighter pilots and were stationed together in France when Galland commanded Fighter Wing 26 (JG-26). Galland cleared an outbuilding of his château headquarters, bought a set of electric trains, and called his brothers together. Like small boys, they set up the trains and played long into the night. Galland’s brother Paul had been shot down and killed the autumn prior to his meeting with Franz. Wutz still flew FW-190 fighters, and Galland worried about his safety. Luetzow mentioned he had a brother in the Navy and said that he “had no idea where he went wrong.” When Galland laughed, Franz realized Luetzow had been telling a joke, although his face remained stone cold.
He had not always been a stone-faced “Man of Ice.” Luetzow had once been a scholar, a track star, and a pilot whom his comrades affectionately called “Franzl” because he was “popular with all ranks because of his easy charm and warm personality.”2 In Spain, he had been the first pilot ever to score a victory in the 109, then a new machine. But when he came home he saw the values of The Party and how the 44 percent had taken over Germany. Luetzow wrote in his diary, “The omnipresent, primitive anti-Semitism in the Reich pisses me off.”3 Luetzow became conflicted. He had been raised in a Prussian military family. His father was an admiral and had taught him that a professional soldier should separate himself from politics. So Luetzow continued to fly and fight until June 1942, when a dark event on the Eastern Front led to the end of his combat career.
Only Galland knew of the dark event that haunted Luetzow. Luetzow had been the commander of Fighter Wing 3 (JG-3) on an airfield outside of Kharkov in the Ukraine, when SS soldiers came to commandeer his services. They wanted Luetzow to lend them any non-flyers he could spare to help them round up people they called “undesirables.” Luetzow knew the reputation of the SS and knew that whatever they were planning, it could not be good. When Luetzow refused to help them, the SS threatened to go around him. Luetzow called his entire wing to the tarmac in dress uniform—the pilots, the orderlies, and even the mechanics. Luetzow told them what the SS had asked of him and said he would remove his Knight’s Cross and resign from the Air Force if any of his men complied with the SS’s request.4
When The Party learned of Luetzow’s speech, rumors circulated that he would be court-martialed and perhaps even shot. Galland heard this and was worried for his friend. He removed Luetzow from command of the wing, probably saving his life. The general put Luetzow on his staff and under his protection. Galland agreed with what Luetzow had done and would thereafter call him “a man above all others.”
A WEEK LATER, MAY 8, 1943
In rickety lawn chairs, Franz, Roedel, and Schroer lounged in the mid-morning sun in front of the airfield’s Operations Office. Spent cigarettes piled up in ashtrays beside them, the product of waiting to greet Fighter Wing 77 (JG-77), which was due to land at any minute. The Ops Office sat at the airfield’s north end and looked like a roadside fruit stand, a strange contrast to the bombed-out hangars nearby. From the office’s open door, Franz heard the excited voices of the JG-77 pilots across the radio. They had sighted Sicily, were entering the traffic pattern to land, and sounded like men who had just been given a second lease on life. They had just escaped Africa.
Roedel and Schroer were obligated to greet JG-77, but Franz was not. He had just landed from a flight and had stuck around, eager to see the reinforcements arrive. II Group desperately needed them. Nearby, in JG-53’s tarmac space, mechanics were still mending the unit’s battered fighters, using manpower to hoist off wings and lower propellers to earth. On paper, JG-53 had transferred three squadrons to Trapani, but their lineup was so depleted they resembled just one squadron. Each plane in JG-53 wore the same crest on its nose, a white diamond with a black spade set within it. For that reason they were known as the “Ace of Spades Wing.”
Roedel recounted the little-known story of JG-53. During the battle for Britain in spring 1940, Goering had discovered that the wife of JG-53’s commander was Jewish. So Goering made the commander and his staff strip the spade crests from their planes. In its place, Goering made them paint a red stripe, a mark of shame. To get back at Goering, the commander and his staff painted over the swastikas on their tails and flew that way all summer. Finally Goering could stand it no longer. He sacked the commander and replaced him. But he allowed the commander’s men to repaint the spades on their planes. Only then did they agree to put Goering’s swastika back on their tails.
Franz smiled at Roedel’s disdain for Goering, even though he knew Roedel was taking a risk in even telling such
a story. The Party had ears everywhere. An orderly stuck his head from the door and reported that JG-77 had entered the circuit to land.
FRANZ KNEW FOR certain the battle for Africa had been lost when he saw the battered 109s of JG-77 touch down. They taxied to the open pens where he and the others sat. The planes’ tan bodies and blue bellies were riddled with bullet holes and covered with oil, sand, and gunpowder residue. Roedel spotted the plane of JG-77’s commander, Major Johannes “Macky” Steinhoff—the plane had forward-facing arrows on its flank instead of numbers. Alarmed, Roedel ran to the plane, with Franz and Schroer following.
JG-77’s commander slid from the plane’s wing. Steinhoff was tall and lanky and had a lean, tired, face. Above his high cheeks his light blue eyes hung sadly and his nose curved gently downward, compounding his look of worry. Those who knew Steinhoff looked up to him as a father figure, although he was only thirty-two.
Steinhoff embraced Roedel, his old friend from flying school, then hurried nearby to one of his unit’s fighters that had rolled to a halt. Bypassing the plane’s pilot, Steinhoff darted behind the wing and fiddled with the wireless radio hatch in the fuselage, where the black cross had been painted and the first aid kit was housed. He opened the hatch and leaned into the fighter’s storage compartment. Steinhoff reached, struggled, then pulled a man out of the plane—by his feet.
The man hugged Steinhoff then fell to the ground and kissed the dirt. As the propellers of the other planes wound down to stillness, Steinhoff rushed to another fighter and popped the hatch, freeing a man inside while the plane’s pilot buried his face against his gun sight, exhausted.
Steinhoff’s pilots had left their tools, bullets, and spare parts in Africa, but they had not abandoned their mechanics. Instead, the pilots had helped the mechanics crawl into the dark, claustrophobic confines of the fighters’ bellies. There they rode out a forty-five-minute flight from hell. No room to wiggle. No parachutes. No hope of escape.
Franz, Schroer, and the men of JG-27 quickly realized what was happening. They rushed to help Steinhoff get the weary JG-77 pilots and mechanics to shade. Mechanics hugged one another and slapped one another on the back. A few cried tears of joy. A few vomited in the bushes. Some were bloody and bandaged. From one fighter they pulled two mechanics. On the wing of another they helped the pilot stand, his nerves frayed. Ambulances raced to the scene.
“So much for reinforcements,” Franz said to Schroer as they steadied a mechanic, his arms over their shoulders.
JG-77 had flown from the Cape Bon Peninsula, where the Germans and Italians were making their last stand in Africa. They had raced low over the waves to Sicily. A few 109s had been shot down during the crossing, each crash costing two lives, as the pilots bravely stayed with their planes rather than jump and leave their mechanics. Only 40 of JG-77’s 120 planes made it out of Africa.*
Having cared for his men, Steinhoff trudged over to Roedel to formally report his unit’s arrival. From Roedel’s side, Franz saw that Steinhoff wore a haggard grin and looked like he was about to collapse. He knew Steinhoff’s name. The man was a national hero with 134 victories, almost all won on the Eastern Front in ugly battles like Stalingrad. He wore the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and looked stern. But when Steinhoff spoke, his voice was calm like a storyteller’s and his words were articulate. Steinhoff had studied the history of languages at the prestigious University of Jena, hoping to become a professor, but when he could not find a teaching job he had joined the Navy. Instead of making him a sailor, the Navy had trained him to fly then handed him to the Air Force when their plans for German aircraft carriers fell through.
Steinhoff had not flown with a mechanic in his plane that day. A tragic story from his past explained his unwillingness to lock a man within his fighter’s inescapable storage compartment. Roedel had heard the legend, whispered only in wing leader circles, and later told it to Franz. In April of the previous year, while flying over the Soviet Union, Steinhoff and his wingman, Lieutenant Walter Krupinski, a colorful figure everyone called “the Count” (because of his love for women and wine), had entered a swirling dogfight against Soviet Yak fighters. Steinhoff was leading their group and had shot down two Yaks and damaged a third, blasting it from nose to tail. As it burned, the Yak flew straight and level. Steinhoff and the Count pulled up alongside the plane and saw its pilot banging against the canopy glass. He was trying to escape, wanting to jump, but his canopy was jammed. Flames spat from the engine like a blowtorch, and gray smoke billowed into his cockpit. The Soviet pilot’s plane had become an oven. The pilot pressed his face against the canopy glass and looked at Steinhoff in terror. Steinhoff decided he needed to do something. The man was being cooked alive. He told the Count to depart and lead the unit back to base, where he would meet him later.
The Count watched Steinhoff drop back behind the Soviet fighter. The Soviet pilot sat back in his seat and looked at the Count. He knew what his enemy was about to do and why. The Soviet pilot nodded his head to the Count. The Count nodded in return and peeled away. The Count glanced back one final time toward the Yak. It had become a cloud of black smoke and falling pieces, destroyed by a blast of Steinhoff’s cannon.
On the ground, the Count found Steinhoff behind the wing of his fighter, crying. For days afterward, Steinhoff avoided conversations with his friends other than to issue orders and fly missions. He never spoke of the incident other than to tell the Count, “If I am ever in that situation, please do the same.”6 The Count told Steinhoff that would never happen, but if it did, he would show him the same mercy. Those who knew Steinhoff before the incident and after said he was never the same. That one day over Russia made him old.
As Steinhoff surveyed the weary men and the destruction that surrounded him at Trapani Airfield, he said to Roedel, “It’s a good day to be alive.” His voice carried a tinge of optimism as if he knew something the others had forgotten.
A MONTH LATER, JUNE 10, 1943
Franz and Willi ate their dinners on the steps of the Squadron 6 alert shack. It was evening, around 6 P.M. From the door behind them hung a small wooden sign that read: LIEUTENANT WILLI KIENTSCH, SQUADRON CAPTAIN. Two weeks prior, Roedel had promoted Rudi Sinner and transferred him to Greece to oversee JG-27’s expansion. In Sinner’s place, Roedel made Willi the leader of Squadron 6 because he was next in line, rank-wise.
Schroer ran to the shack, looking worried. He told Franz and Willi that Olympus had just called him with a distress message from the Italians. A flight of their Macchi fighters had just been shot into the sea north of Pantelleria Island.
Franz and Willi knew Pantelleria. They had been in combat there earlier that afternoon, when Willi had shot down two Spitfires while Franz covered his tail. The island lay halfway between Africa and Sicily and was swarming with Allied planes. Three weeks earlier, the Afrika Korps had surrendered, handing over 275,000 P.O.W.s to the Allies. Now Pantelleria’s Italian garrison was the last obstacle preventing an Allied seaborne invasion of Sicily.
Schroer said that an Italian seaplane was taking off any minute from Marsala, just down the coast, to rescue any survivors. Franz joked that they should send two seaplanes, one to rescue the Italians and another to rescue their seaplane. Willi agreed—the mission was suicidal. The Allies had been bombing and strafing Pantelleria for five days, sending so many planes that they were seen circling, waiting in line for a chance to attack.
Schroer removed his hat and scratched his head. Looking to Willi, he broke the news. “The Italians can only put up three fighters,” he said, “so Squadron 6 is going with them.” Willi cursed. Franz shook his head. He knew the Italians as the same pilots who once attacked a narrow island off the coast of Trapani, thinking it was an enemy submarine. Schroer explained that the orders were Roedel’s, not his. Roedel had ordered a “rescue flight” of ten fighters to take the Italians to Pantelleria and back.
Willi complained to Schroer that he had already been there that day and was not in the mood to go back.
“Then send your pilots who haven’t seen the enemy,” Schroer said. Franz set down his mess tin and began to stand. “No,” Willi said, tugging Franz’s pant leg.
Willi told Schroer he could give him six pilots who had not been in combat that day. Schroer said he would find four others and took off running. Willi looked sheepishly at Franz as he stood to get his roster. Two weeks prior, Willi had surpassed “magic 30,” triggering his nomination for the Knight’s Cross. Suddenly, he had something to live for. Fan mail. Girls. An inevitable celebration in Kisslegg. Knowing the Cross was coming made Willi more cautious. Franz had reason to be more careful, too. Three weeks earlier his G model had caught fire during a practice flight over Sicily. Franz had bailed out of the plane, slightly burned, and lost his second fighter of the war. For three weeks he was grounded to heal.
From the steps, Franz and Willi watched the ten pilots run to their planes. As they took off into the darkening skies, Franz told Willi he had a bad feeling. Half the pilots of the rescue flight had no victories. Their leader, Lieutenant Hans Lewes, was a fresh-faced kid himself. As the “greatest gun” among them, Lewes had just three victories.
“We should be with them,” Franz said. Begrudgingly Willi stood and reached for his life preserver. Franz grabbed his. Together, they ran for their planes.
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER
The purple night sky slowly smothered the orange sunset as a lone 109 flew low over the sea toward Sicily. A cloud of vapor trailed the plane’s wake. Metal pieces tumbled from its wings and body in the wind. The plane was falling apart.
Behind the controls, Franz wrestled with the plane’s shaking stick. Bullet holes dotted the cockpit around him. The bridge of Franz’s nose bled from a tracer bullet that had pierced the canopy glass and grazed him. Franz clutched the broken stem of his pipe between his teeth. A bullet had exploded the pipe’s bowl. Near his right knee, the Mediterranean Sea was visible through a fist-sized hole in the cockpit’s skin.