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

by Adam Makos

  Hohagen relayed word to Steinhoff—it was time to launch. Galland dismissed the pilots with a salute. Steinhoff called Franz and the others of his flight together. Steinhoff had once admitted that attacking the heavies “was something like controlled suicide.” But now, he tried to inspire his men. He said he had been listening to the bombers on a radio at the orphanage and could hear their pilots talking between planes. They no longer bothered with radio silence, assuming that the German Air Force was finished. “Let’s prove them wrong,” Steinhoff said.

  GREEN FLARES ARCED across the field. With the tower vacant this was the signal for ground personnel to clear the runway. From the cockpit of White 3 through his headset Franz heard Steinhoff’s voice telling him and the others to ignore the flares and wait until their engines were warm. Franz found himself looking over his shoulder, hoping enemy fighters did not swoop down on the field. He removed his gloves and passed his rosary beads between his fingers. Only specs of black paint remained on the pale purple beads.

  After five minutes that seemed like five years, Steinhoff began his takeoff roll followed by the Count and the others. Franz dropped his rosary beads into his chest pocket and zipped it shut. He slipped on his gloves and gently pushed the throttle forward. Orange flames in the shape of cones throbbed from his engines’ exhausts. White 3 rolled along the runway’s grass, leaving in its wake a hazy cloud that smelled like coal. The 262 shrieked like a banshee and built speed slowly, its three wheels spinning into a blur as the runway whipped past. Franz knew that the 262 required two thousand yards to reach its liftoff speed of 120 miles per hour, so he held the stick neutral to keep the nose down. Ahead, Franz saw the airfield’s tree-lined perimeter growing closer. Beyond lay the steeples and rooftops of the village of Feldkirchen. Pulling back on the stick, Franz lifted the plane’s nose. The jet hesitated, its nosewheel dragging through the air before the whole machine floated upward. Small trees whipped beneath the jet’s spinning tires. With its gear sucked into its stomach, the jet began to sprint, sucking air into turbojets that heated the air and spit out thrust. Unlike the 109’s engine torque, the 262’s engines pushed together, resulting in straight speed.

  The flight of five aimed toward the northeast and flew low to build their speed before climbing. The skies around them were empty. Franz suddenly believed what Steinhoff meant when he said, “We are the Air Force.” Through his jet’s plastic bubble canopy, Franz saw Bavaria around him. The countryside sparkled as the snow melted to reveal spring’s green pastures. An ugly war has never been fought in a more beautiful place, he thought.

  Blistering along at 475 miles per hour, the flight blasted over the female flak gunners who manned the guns around the airfield. The pilots called them “Fighter Dolls.” The formation whistled over battered villages where women, children, and old men scurried to catch a glimpse. They passed over columns of German refugees, some of the nation’s two million homeless who now camped in villages and alongside country roads. The flight ripped across the autobahn, their engines’ thunder echoing along the concrete, calling out the beaten pilots and tired mechanics from beneath the trees where they waited to surrender. The men stepped to the road and stared wide-eyed at the jets that raced across the pines, trailing a snarling roar of defiance that quickened their hearts.

  The people on the ground held their hands over their eyes, fixated at the sight of the five jets climbing toward the sun. Some wept with pride and others with sadness. Some shook their heads with scorn at such futile stubbornness. But everyone who watched the five jets knew they were going off to battle an overwhelming foe. They saw for themselves that Goering was wrong, the Air Force had never abandoned them. They had seen the Air Force and more, something that Goering had told them no longer existed in German skies: bravery.

  32,000 FEET ABOVE THE EARTH

  From his place at the right rear of the triangle formation, Franz heard Steinhoff call out the bombers with elation. Steinhoff banked the formation northward to the left, and Franz saw the heavies. They flew like a wispy silver cloud above the patchwork fields. His eyes lit up. The cloud of bombers was tiny, just thirty-odd planes, and appeared to be floating westward between the cities of Straubing and Inglostadt. Compared with the two-thousand-bomber raids the Americans had been sending, thirty bombers was nothing.

  Steinhoff began his five-hundred-mile-per-hour charge. The attack method in the 262 had changed to compensate for the jet’s blazing speed. The days of dive, hit, climb, and repeat had past. Now Franz knew to make a sprint for the bombers, hit them from the sides or behind, pull up, curve around, and repeat the attack. Franz flipped up the metal spoon that guarded the 262’s thumb trigger. His gloved thumb rested on the brown button that would ignite the four 30mm heavy cannons in the jet’s nose. Franz used to tell his students what he had been told, that the cannons could “chew through the wing of a B-17” with just five shells. He was ready to test the claim.

  The bombers were still tiny and far beyond range when Franz looked up and saw a sight that made his eyes bulge. Flying straight toward him and his comrades, high above, was a flock of silver fighters. He knew the silhouette—long noses, straight wings, and narrow tails. He had shot one down the prior April. It was the fighter the Germans called “the Flying Cross,” the one the Americans called “the Mustang.” It was the P-51, and there were at least one hundred of them. Franz knew he was in trouble. In his calm professor-like voice, Steinhoff radioed: “Trouble above.” A 262 could normally escape the P-51 and outrun it with ease. But if a P-51 was high above a 262, it could dive and pick up enough speed to briefly run with the jet. Looking up while shielding his eyes, Franz removed his finger from the trigger when he saw the P-51s diving.

  Franz looked up again and saw three P-51s breaking from the diving gaggle, their noses pointed straight at him. He knew this was a battle he could not win, and the others knew this, too. The jets on Franz’s left banked to the left, and Franz banked hard to the right. Franz would never get close enough to the bombers that day to see that they wore tail markings he would have recognized, the triangle K of the 379th Bomb Group. Rolling inverted, he instinctively turned to the tactic that had saved his life for three years in 109s. He dove.

  Aiming White 3 at the earth, he let her run like a rocket blazing through the atmosphere. The speed pinned him to his seat. Franz glimpsed the P-51s behind him, racing to catch up. Other P-51s swarmed his comrades. Franz pushed the trembling control stick forward to deepen the dive. The needle in the airspeed indicator quivered. Franz felt the g-forces piling their weight on his sternum.

  The voice of Lieutenant Fahrmann shouted over the radio, “Danube One, my horse is lame!” Franz knew the code for engine trouble and knew the P-51s had gotten Fahrmann. Seconds later, he heard Fahrmann say he was jumping.

  White 3 raced faster and faster toward a layer of clouds at twenty thousand feet. Franz’s eyes watered. His airspeed indicator wound past the 600-mile-per-hour mark. The jet’s redline was painted on the dial at the 625-mile-per-hour mark. When the needle reached that point, the jet’s controls would freeze and the craft could potentially break apart.

  Franz knew he had left the P-51s behind when clouds whipped past his canopy, revealing his blinding speed. Thanks to gravity and the turbojets, his 262 had become a bullet, ripping through ten thousand feet in seconds. As he burst through the clouds, the wide, patchwork fields below spread across Franz’s windscreen in all directions. Franz decided he was safe with the clouds separating him from the fighting above. He tried to pull up, but the flightstick was frozen, locked by “an evil spell.”3

  The cockpit turned silent. Only the sound of the wind howling across the wings told Franz he was alive. The speedometer’s needle quivered at the 625-mile-per-hour mark. He had flown past the plane’s limits. He had forgotten a rule of the 262, to never dive in a jet so fast it needed no help from gravity. Now, White 3 was frozen in a death dive. Franz struggled to pull the control stick, but it felt as unbending as an iron bar. Pi
nned to his seat, Franz knew he could not bail out. He felt himself grow cold as the thought struck him. I just killed myself. Franz began to pray feverishly.

  Kick the rudder! Franz thought he heard a voice. But his earphones were silent. Perhaps it was the voice of one of his instructors from jet school. Using the immovable control stick as leverage, Franz dug his heels into the rudder pedals. He pushed the left pedal forward with all his might. The jet shook from the tail. He pushed the right pedal. The jet shook again. Franz began kicking the rudder pedals, one then the other, until the jet’s tail began to wag. Suddenly Franz felt the control stick move. The jet tore through ten thousand feet, then eight thousand feet. Franz saw the farm fields ahead tighten in clarity, with crop lines and roads appearing. He wanted to rip back the throttle but fought the urge. He kept kicking the rudder. He pulled back on the control stick, grunting and straining. He was certain the stick was about to snap.

  Slowly, White 3’s nose twitched. Then it rose. Gritting his teeth and straining at the stick, Franz pulled the jet into a gentle arc. He saw the earth approaching, three thousand feet away, then two thousand, then one thousand. Franz knew it would be close, whether his pullout had enough arc to curve above the earth. He stopped breathing but kept pulling. Just before the jet’s underslung engines could scoop the soil, White 3’s nose lifted upward and her engines’ thrust blasted off the earth.

  Regaining control, his altimeter at 0, as he flew along the field Franz glanced to his left and saw the shocked faces of a group of farmers standing even with him. Climbing and turning, he caught his breath. Then he saw something incredible. The farmers were stomping flames that had broken out among the hay they had been laying out for their animals. His engines had made the ground catch fire.

  Franz flew past the farmers again and waved in apology. The farmers stopped and stared in wonder, too shocked to manage a reply. Their cows bolted from the jet’s noise. The farmers returned to stomping. Turning for Munich, Franz flew past a plume of black smoke that rose from Ingolstadt, where the B-17s had struck an ordnance depot. He unzipped his black leather jacket. Sweating, Franz cursed himself for being so stupid. In the same breath, he thanked God for flying with him. His instructors had never warned him not to dive in the 262. No one could have experienced what he had and come back to warn of it.* Franz knew he had not pulled from that dive alone. Something had broken the evil spell, and it was a force more powerful than his muscles.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, APRIL 9, 1945, AROUND 4:00 P.M.

  Franz buried his shovel in the airfield’s white, sandy soil and pitched the dirt aside. His foxhole was already four feet deep, but he kept digging. Next to him, White 3 sat in the late day shadows on the other side of the blast pen’s wall. Franz worked in his flying uniform because he knew he could be called to scramble at any moment.

  Four days earlier, the Americans had found JV-44. When Franz flew home after barely recovering from his plane’s death dive, he arrived over the field just after P-51s had strafed it. Everyone knew they would be back. The one-man foxholes were Galland’s idea, so the men could reach cover immediately upon landing. At the other blast pens leading east to the alert shack, the other pilots—Galland included—were digging foxholes alongside the pens that housed their jets. Franz smirked at the irony that he was digging a “grave” like the one he called home in Africa.

  A rapid, punctuated thump of machine guns froze Franz’s foot to his shovel. Glancing west, he saw a P-51 burst over the trees then dive to earth and race low toward the airfield. Another P-51 appeared. Then another. Black-and-yellow checkerboards covered their noses, the war paint of the 353rd Fighter Group. The fighters swept across the southern edge of the field, their guns puffing. Their bullets chewed along the dirt and strafed up and over the blast pens and anti-aircraft gun pits. A parked jet exploded in flames. Anti-aircraft gunners fell dead over their earthen pits. The P-51 pilots hugged the ground, the air scoops beneath their bellies almost swiping the grass. Across Germany, enemy fighters had declared open season on German airfields, continuing eight straight days of raids that would claim 1,697 German aircraft destroyed.

  Sirens wailed as the field’s flak guns came to life and threw up rapid black clouds. The P-51s seemed to fly faster than their engine noise, a guttural growl that echoed after they had cleared the field. The P-51 pilots kept running east after each strike, staying low, not climbing or banking. Franz could tell they knew their craft. The first wave had barely departed when a second wave of P-51s burst through the smoke at the field’s southern edge. They ripped north across the field at 320 miles per hour and strafed the planes parked in front of the terminal. Each time, the P-51s came from a new direction to confuse the flak gunners.

  For a moment, Franz stood still, his body frozen with alarm. The P-51s had hit everywhere except the flight line where he was standing. Men around Franz had jumped into their holes, ducked into blast pens, and sprinted for a bombed-out barn behind the alert shack. Franz found his feet, tossed his shovel aside, and jumped into his foxhole. Peering up at the sky, he saw ribbons of fire rip overhead. A shower of dirt told him he had moved just in time. A split second later Franz looked up and saw a flight of P-51s fly directly over his head. Their prop blast blew off his hat. He could smell their exhaust.

  After the flak guns had chased the P-51s away, Franz slowly climbed out of his hole. Three of the unit’s jets lay burning around him, and others had caught bullets. Franz ran to check on his comrades, but miraculously, none had been hit. When Galland came by, inspecting the damage, he lamented, “They would strafe a stray dog if they could.”5 Franz climbed onto White 3’s wings and walked from side to side. He smiled when he saw that she was unscathed.

  A siren stopped Franz. He jumped from his plane and into his hole, certain the P-51s were back. The other men along the flight line hid in their holes. Only their heads showed as they nervously glanced skyward. Franz waited for an order to take off, but none came. He waited in his hole next to White 3 until he heard a low rumble that he recognized from his time in Sicily—the droning of steel wasps. Franz saw them emerge from the clouds high above. Box after box of silver bombers motored from south to north. They were B-17s, two hundred planes strong.

  The flak guns of the airfield and the city of Munich blasted out, rocketing shells thirty thousand feet up. Some of his comrades ran from their holes, but Franz stayed. He expected Galland to come running to tell him to evacuate White 3. When Franz heard the high-pitched whine of bombs, he knew that no such order was coming. Franz put his thumbs in his ears and opened his mouth just as the little girl had demonstrated in Potsdam. He squeezed his chest to his knees and huddled belowground as the earth shook. The pressure from each blast ripped over his hole and flung dirt down his back. His ears rang. His eyes watered. Each shock wave of pressure hit like an invisible foot on his back. Each blast sucked the breath from his lungs and stomped him deeper. Franz knew from the direction of the fury that the bombers were pounding the terminal and hangars where they expected JV-44 to live and operate. He heard glass shattering, fire sizzling, and walls slamming down. A bomber whined and spun toward the earth, but Franz never heard its crash over the chaos.*

  When the earth stopped shaking, Franz looked up from under his arm and saw the bombers turning west for home. He climbed from his hole and wiped his eyes. His comrades emerged, shaking the cobwebs from their heads. Across the airstrip, gray smoke rose from the terminal. The side of the tower had been chopped away and now it teetered. The bombers had dropped firebombs that had burned through the roofs of the hangars, from which black smoke poured. High explosive bombs had pitted the terminal’s concrete parking area and the grass runway, leaving deep, white craters with a perfect dirt ring around each. Along the field’s southern blast pens, jets were burning. When the air raid sirens stopped wailing, others cries could be heard—faint, muted sobs of pain from the south end of the field. There, fifty men and Fighter Dolls had been wounded. Six men had been killed. Franz saw the survivors li
mping among the burning jets. As he joined his comrades in a sprint to lend aid, Franz knew that without some glimmer of hope, JV-44 was going to fold before doing any good.

  * * *

  * As the war wound down, American fighter pilots knew that any German pilot still flying had to be an expert. This awareness led some American pilots (a small, unknown percentage) to shoot German pilots in their parachutes or after landing. Their logic was pragmatic. They did not want a German expert returning to the skies to kill a ten-man bomber crew, a buddy, or them.

  * Franz would remember, “Later the next day we actually had a briefing on my experience. Remember that we were all still learning about these planes. This was a valuable lesson.”4

  * A JV-44 officer, Major Werner Roell, was in Munich and saw an airman parachute from the B-17. Roell found the airman in the hands of civilians and an SS officer. Before the SS officer could execute the airman, Roell chased the officer away and took the American to a hospital. “The man might have worn a different uniform but he was still a fellow human-being,” Roell would remember.6

  22

  THE SQUADRON OF EXPERTS

  A WEEK LATER, MID-APRIL 1945

  FRANZ AND HIS comrades stood around the alert shack, eating sandwiches of bread and jam, as they did every day at noon. They ate in silence, tired from the British Mosquito bombers that had flown over Munich, triggering air raid sirens to deny them sleep. They were weary from cleaning up after the bombing and strafing raids that had not let up. They hardly noticed the pilot who entered their midst, the one with the shoulder boards of a major and the Knight’s Cross around his neck. One of the pilots saw the stranger and did a double take. He recognized the man with the strong, simple face, who happened to have 301 victories, three and a half times the victory count of the Red Baron. The pilot asked: “Barkhorn?” The stranger chuckled and nodded.