A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

by Adam Makos

  Almost hourly, sleek 262s would rip past the hangar on takeoff, their twin engines blasting like rockets strapped to their wings. To their instructor’s annoyance, Franz and his fellow students would forget their exercises to stop and stare. Some called the jet “the Swallow” and others “the Stormbird,” but whenever they saw it buzz the field at 575 miles per hour, faster than anything else in the skies, they knew the 262 was Germany’s last hope.

  An instructor stopped the class and shouted for the students to gather around. The instructor read Franz and the others a teletype sent from Goering to all Air Force units. It said that Galland, the general of fighters, had stepped down due to health problems. Franz scowled, having heard rumors that said Goering had sacked Galland.

  Goering had written the announcement weeks prior but had held it, waiting for the Gestapo to bring him evidence against Galland. Now they’d found witnesses who would testify that Galland had admitted “the war is lost.” These words, coming from a general, constituted treachery under the Subversion Law. Goering knew that Galland would kill himself rather than face the shame of a trial, so he sent the notice to the fighter forces to prepare them for the general’s death.

  While the words of Goering’s memo were still swirling in Franz’s mind, across Germany, Galland was loading his pistol. He had told his girlfriend, “Tonight will be the night,” and she fled his house. Galland spent the rest of the day pondering how Goering and The Party’s propaganda machine would spin his death. When they forced “the Desert Fox,” Rommel, to kill himself, they said he died of an embolism. When Goering pushed General Ernst Udet, Germany’s top surviving WWI ace, to kill himself, they said he died in a plane crash. When General Hans Jeschonnek, Goering’s chief of staff, shot himself, they said it was from fatigue.

  That night, before Galland could pull the trigger, his phone rang. Galland picked up. The caller was the chief of the Gestapo, who begged Galland not to shoot himself. Hitler had learned of Galland’s intentions via his girlfriend’s pleas, and now Hitler was enraged at Goering. Hitler was certain that the fallout from Galland’s death would destroy the Air Force in its fragile state. The dictator had ordered Goering to stop Galland’s suicide, so Goering had ordered the Gestapo to intervene. The Gestapo chief told Galland that Hitler and Goering had a proposal he needed to hear.

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER

  Galland stepped from his sports car at Goering’s country estate, called Carinhall, that lay east of Berlin. Goering was suspiciously gracious as he showed Galland to a great room, its walls lined with the mounted heads of wild game. He invited Galland to sit on a couch and talked with him like an old friend. Goering took credit for intervening to prevent Galland’s suicide and dismissed any rumors of treason charges. Goering gleefully explained that Hitler had authorized him to give Galland a squadron of his own, “… so you can prove what you’ve always said about the 262’s great potential.” Galland’s dark eyes sparkled. Goering said the squadron could fly and fight in the manner of Galland’s choosing as long as he did not interfere with other units. “You can recruit anyone you want,” Goering added, “provided that my office approves of them.” Galland nodded in agreement.

  “Take that ‘sad sack’ Steinhoff,” Goering said with a grin, “and Luetzow, too.”1

  Galland left Goering’s estate as happy as the Reichsmarschall. He knew why Goering and Hitler were being so generous: they wanted him and his “traitors” to again take to the skies, where they would surely die in combat.

  Galland had admitted that the war was lost, and he did not want to see it prolonged. But he also knew the Allied heavy bombers would not stop coming until Germany had surrendered, a day that seemed far away with the madmen—Hitler and Goering—at the helm. Goering had told the people of Germany that the fighter pilots had abandoned them, but Galland departed that day determined to prove that Goering was wrong.

  TWO MONTHS LATER, MARCH 17, 1945

  In the hangar at Lechfeld, a dozen pilots huddled around Franz as he gave a lesson about a jet engine that sat on a mount in front of him. One of the pilots asked if Franz could show them the engine’s insides. “I wish,” Franz said, “but there are parts you’re not allowed to see.” The students groaned. Franz sympathized with them.

  After graduation from jet training, the school’s instructors had kept Franz on the roster to teach because he had mastered the 262 so quickly. Franz owed his success to his airline days, where he flew multi-engine craft, unlike the average fighter pilot who had only single-engine training. Upon graduation Franz had hoped to join a jet fighter unit, but only the jet bomber units, who had Goering’s favor, possessed planes, fuel, and openings for pilots. Rather than join them, Franz begrudgingly stayed as an instructor and waited.

  Unlike his earlier days in flight instructing, Franz’s students were no longer cadets. Now they were veteran fighter and bomber pilots. Franz explained to the pilots that the 262’s revolutionary Junkers-built Jumo 004 engines were both the jet’s gift and its curse. They provided incredible thrust, but they were finicky. “Keep your hands off the throttle whenever possible,” Franz told the pilots, “especially at high altitude.” The men looked at him with confusion—every pilot knew the importance of using the throttle in a dogfight. Franz explained that dramatic changes in the engine’s internal speed could cause it to snuff out like a candle. When the pilots asked Franz why this happened, he said that he was forbidden from telling them how the engine actually worked. “It’s secret,” he said mockingly. The pilots laughed.

  Really, Franz knew the engines were as fragile as china because they were made from low-grade materials due to mineral shortages.* A brand-new engine had a life-span of just twenty-eight hours, and refurbished engines were good for just ten hours between overhauls.

  That night in the Lechfeld officer’s club, Franz was talking and drinking with his students. One of them was a new pilot who had been trained to fly bombers but had never entered combat. “What’s it really like out there?” he asked Franz. Franz told him candidly what he had seen the prior fall when he was stationed near Dresden. “Be thankful for this training,” Franz told the young pilot. “It takes eight weeks to teach you what you could learn in an hour.” The pilots laughed in agreement. Franz was taking another drink when it hit him. “Here we are studying engine manuals while our comrades are being slaughtered,” he said. The veterans nodded in sad agreement.

  Just as the political officers made their way into front-line squadrons, they also were imbedded in jet school. The following morning Franz found himself standing at attention in his commander’s office. The new pilot Franz had been talking to the night before had secretly been a political officer. Without a choice, Franz’s commander expelled him from the school.

  Outside his commander’s office, Franz looked at his doctor’s waiver, his ticket to Florida. Then he remembered the whispers he had heard among his fellow instructors. They had heard that Galland and his mutineers were forming a 262 squadron at Brandenburg Air Base, west of Berlin. The instructors jokingly called the unit “the Flying Sanatorium” and “Galland’s Circus.” But Franz knew Galland, the man behind the unit, and knew there was nothing funny about him. In the school’s office, Franz called Brandenburg and eventually reached Galland. He asked the general if he could join his squadron.

  “Yes, we’d be glad to have you,” Galland said. He explained a catch—Goering had given him authority to build a squadron but gave him too few aircraft to succeed. “Just bring a jet with you,” Galland told Franz. Franz’s heart sunk. He knew it was impossible to procure a jet without orders. Thinking quickly, Franz asked Galland if his unit had a name. “JV-44,” Galland told him.* Franz told the general he would try to join him, somehow.

  Franz had an enlisted man drive him from Lechfeld to the town of Leipheim, an hour west. Leipheim was nestled around a factory that churned out 262s and had its own airfield. In the factory’s parking lot, Franz suited up in his flight gear. Smoke billowed from the factory follo
wing a raid that morning by B-24s of the 467th Bomb Group.†

  Inside, on the production line, he saw only one intact 262 sitting on its gear. The jet’s smooth body was painted gray like a shark, and white putty filled its seams. Hastily painted black crosses decorated its flanks and wings. The factory foreman approached Franz and asked if he could assist him. “I’m here on orders to collect an aircraft for Galland’s unit, JV-44,” Franz said. Puzzled, the foreman checked his lists. He said he had no such transfer orders and had never heard of “JV-44.” Seeing that his bluff was not working, Franz admitted the truth to the foreman, that he had no orders or papers. Franz told the foreman that Galland was forming a squadron of aces who had volunteered to fly against the bombers.

  The foreman scratched his chin, pondering Franz’s admission. Seeing his opportunity fading, Franz asked the foreman, “What would be better, letting me take this into the sky or seeing it destroyed, here, in the next raid?” The foreman looked at the beautiful machine and the smoldering plant behind it.

  “I think I found your paperwork,” he said with a smile. Franz called Brandenburg and reached JV-44 to ask the weather and tell them he was coming.

  Bulldozers were repairing the factory’s runway as Franz taxied the gray jet between bomb craters. With a roar, Franz blasted off in the machine with the pulsing engines, the craft said to be Germany’s last hope. He steered northeast to join the Flying Sanatorium.

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, OVER BRANDENBURG AIR BASE

  From above, Franz admired the circular flak towers that surrounded the airfield, spires that kept away enemy fighters. When his wheels touched down, he taxied toward the control tower and hangars, where dozens of 262s sat parked in lines.

  But the air traffic controllers radioed him to say he was heading to the wrong place—JV-44 was across the field. So Franz cut across the runway and motored toward the distant tree line, where ten or so 262s sat parked in front of a small one-story office. Franz shut down his jet and slid from the wing. Half the jets around him were missing engines. The flight line looked more like a boneyard.

  “I’m in the wrong place,” Franz said to the first crewman who approached him. “Where’s JV-44?”

  “You’re in the right place, sir,” the man replied. “This is JV-44.”

  Confused, Franz asked where Galland was, but the crewman just shrugged.

  A man emerged from the ops office and approached Franz. He wore flying boots and black pilot’s pants but oddly also a knit sweater and skullcap. The man’s arms dangled and he walked with a lean. Franz thought he looked like a sailor navigating a tossing deck.

  When the man came closer, Franz saw that long strands of blond hair shot from beneath the man’s skullcap, covering his eyes. Franz became certain the man was a sailor.

  “Beautiful machine!” the man said. He flashed a large grin across his strong, deep jaw. He wore the rank of a major.

  “An hour old,” Franz said proudly, saluting.

  The man saluted with gusto and introduced himself as Major Eric Hohagen, JV-44’s technical officer. Franz knew the technical officer was effectively third in command and in charge of keeping the aircraft operational.

  Franz had heard of Hohagen. He was an Air Force legend. As Hohagen patted Franz’s 262 like a horse, Franz saw for himself that the stories about Hohagen were true. His right eyebrow arched higher than his left one, giving his face a permanent quizzical expression. Hohagen had been shot down in ’43, and in the crash his head had hit his gun sight, shattering his skull. With no other options, doctors had replaced his broken skull pieces with Plexiglas before sewing him back up, leaving his face forever uneven.

  Hohagen asked Franz how he had come to join the unit. Franz explained that he knew Galland from Sicily and recently got booted from jet school courtesy of a political officer.

  “So you don’t sleep well with The Party?” Hohagen asked. Franz laughed. Hohagen asked how he was to know Franz was not a political officer himself. Franz shrugged. Hohagen told Franz a joke that he called “the political officer test.”

  “Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and all of their friends are out on a boat at sea,” Hohagen said. “There’s a big storm and their boat sinks! Who’s saved?” Hohagen’s mouth remained agape as if he wanted to give the answer himself.

  Franz knew the joke. “Germany.”

  Hohagen roared with approval. He explained that no political officer would have the stomach to finish the joke. Franz chuckled at the irony that the man he had thought was a sailor had told him a joke about the sea. Throughout the Air Force, Hohagen was known for his colorful spirit, for flying in a yellow leather coat with a fox fur collar, and for wearing boots topped with fur. Hohagen was anything but a clown in the air and had fifty-odd victories to his name.

  Unsettled by the paltry image of JV-44 around him, Franz asked where everyone was. Hohagen explained that JV-44 was off to a slow start. The unit had about a dozen pilots. A third of their jets were broken because they had been drawing refurbished planes from factory repair lines. They had no base housing and lived in private homes. Their motor pool was Galland’s BMW sports car, Steinhoff’s DKW motorcycle, and a few kubelwagens.

  “Can you draw support from JG-7?” Franz asked, having seen Fighter Wing 7, one of the few jet fighter outfits, across the field. Hohagen explained that he had served under Steinhoff in JG-7 until Steinhoff was fired. Hohagen said that he, personally, had led III Group across the field, but the man who took his job, Rudi Sinner, could do nothing to help—they had already asked. Goering had forbidden anyone from assisting JV-44, “the Mutineers.” Franz’s ears perked up. He told Hohagen he knew Sinner from Africa.

  “You can go over there,” Hohagen told Franz. “But I cannot.”

  Franz was confused. Hohagen explained that he had been so angry when Steinhoff was fired that he trashed his office, destroying the place in protest. Before he could be arrested, he called the flight doctor and told him to hurry quickly, because his head wounds were making him crazy. Instead of a court-martial, he was banished to the hospital, from which Galland and Steinhoff retrieved him for JV-44. What Hohagen failed to mention was that to protest Goering’s treatment of Steinhoff he also stopped wearing his Knight’s Cross that day except for photos.

  Franz removed his cap and showed Hohagen the dent in his forehead. Hohagen removed his cap and showed Franz the massive scar in his. They compared their doctor’s certificates and instantly bonded.

  Later that afternoon, a BMW sports car pulled up to the office. Galland and Steinhoff emerged from the car, grumbling from a fruitless trip in search of pilots. Galland had chosen Steinhoff as his number two man, the operations officer who would oversee training and recruiting when not leading missions.

  “You must have pissed someone off!” Galland said when he saw Franz. Franz smiled guiltily as he saluted. Galland explained that he had wired Franz’s name to Berlin, and no one protested his attempt to join the unit. Galland said that Goering was blocking many of his pilot requests and only allowing men to stay with JV-44 if they had run afoul of him or The Party. Goering wanted the Mutineers to fly long enough to die, not to consume the Air Force’s last veterans and precious aircraft.

  Franz asked Galland, “Will your brother be joining us?”

  “No, he’s dead,” Galland said. Franz remembered from their meeting in Sicily that Galland had lost one brother but had another who was still flying fighters.

  “No, the other one, who was flying 190s,” Franz said.

  “They’re both dead,” Galland said as calmly as if he were ordering a cup of tea. “Wutz joined Paul in the afterlife more than a year ago.”

  Franz apologized, but Galland cut him off. “Don’t apologize when you’re coming from the same place.” Franz realized that Galland had remembered his stories of August from their conversation in Sicily. At that moment, Franz’s doubts of the meager unit vanished. Regardless of JV-44’s strength or success, he knew that they were all fighting for the same th
ing. Not for the Reich. For their brothers.

  DURING HIS FIRST week in the unit, Franz and the others waited around Brandenburg. Galland departed one morning in his sports car, motoring south. Steinhoff said the general had gone to find JV-44 a new base as far from Berlin as possible. The American and Soviet armies were driving to link up and separate the top half of Germany from the bottom half. Galland wanted his unit to be on the American side, not the Soviet side, when the curtain came down.

  Franz watched as ground crewmen painted his naked fighter a wavy, mottled green that covered the black Air Force crosses on its flanks. In place of each black cross, they painted the white outline of a cross and on both of the plane’s flanks they painted a white number 3.

  One night Franz snuck across the airfield to visit Sinner, who welcomed him into his office. Franz was astounded that Sinner, in the nearly two years since he had seen him in Sicily, had never earned the Knight’s Cross. Sinner, who always called himself “just an ordinary soldier,” laughed it off. Franz knew Sinner was anything but “ordinary.” He had nearly forty victories and had been shot down eleven times.

  “So sad about the bear, isn’t it?” Sinner said. Franz fell back in his seat. He knew Sinner was talking about Bobbi, the Squadron 6 mascot.

  Sinner told Franz that he had heard their old squadron had been so torn up in the fighting that during their retreat to central Germany they needed to leave the bear behind. They could not release the bear into the wild, because he had been raised by humans and did not know how to hunt. Since the bear had come to weigh four hundred pounds, he was too heavy to transport. When the zoo would not take the bear back, the squadron had no other options. The squadron pilots and ground crew could not bring themselves to do what had to be done. Franz looked away, afraid to hear the rest.