A Higher Call

by Adam Makos

Hitler and The Party took over Germany after 56 percent of the country had voted against them.

Of the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war.

Franz’s father gave him a lesson. “Always do the right thing, even if no one sees it.”

“A man thinks and acts for himself,” Father Josef said. “Because he knows he only must answer to God.”

But Franz felt ashamed for his mother when he heard that every Sunday for six weeks his name had been read aloud during Mass at the cathedral in Regensburg, among the list of the excommunicated.

Franz had suspected this day would come.* This was why the government had trained him for free. After the Versailles Treaty had outlawed their Air Force, the German government had secretly trained scores of new pilots like him and funded the national airline—Lufthansa—so that the nation would have seasoned pilots to one day rebuild the Air Force. The routes and times that Franz had been devising for Lufthansa no doubt had also found their way into the hands of the Air Force.

Galland lit up a thick cigar, a trademark affectation he had discovered while flying in the Spanish Civil War. Galland loved cigars so much he had an electric cigar lighter installed in his 109. Galland’s 109 was legendary for other reasons. Franz had never seen the plane, but Galland was said to have customized it with extra machine guns and had his personal nose art, a custom-designed cartoon of Mickey Mouse, painted alongside the cockpit.

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.

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.

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.

“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.*

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...

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.

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. In the distance, the Sicilian coast came into view, a gray smudge above the blue-green sea. Franz’s eyes flared. He talked to the plane, urging her to keep going. His 109 bucked and groaned. Franz tapped the oil pressure gauge with his finger. Its quivering needle told him the plane was bleeding fluids and dying. Every minute she flew was three miles closer to land. Franz wanted to call Olympus, but .50-caliber bullets had punched holes in his radio. The holes matched those along his wings and through his tail and cowling. Franz and Willi had caught up with the rescue flight just in time to experience disaster. They had spotted the seaplane by the bright red crosses on its wings. Ahead of the seaplane they found their comrades with the three Italian Macchi 202 fighters nestled behind them. The formation flew at wave top level—without a fighting chance.

The Germans and Italians would call the next ten minutes a “slaughter.” The Americans would call the same event “one of the most spectacular air victories of the North African campaign.”

Bullet after bullet hit his plane. Only his flying skill kept him alive. He last saw Willi and two 109s running for Sicily with P-40s on their tails. He gave chase but was unable to keep up. Franz found himself flying alone. Glancing at the sea, he tugged his safety straps. He had decided he would ditch before he would jump again. Like every German pilot, Franz knew his parachute straps were made of hemp, which was known to often snap and drop a pilot to his death. The Air Force was said to be developing new nylon parachute harnesses. Three miles from Sicily’s shore, the engine of Franz’s fighter gagged without oil. With a jolt, the engine quit. Franz felt strangely relieved. The engine’s painful struggle had been fraying his nerves. He steered the dead, six-thousand-pound fighter down like a glider from his boyhood. The sea below resembled a grass pasture. As he neared the waves, he saw that the water was green and undulating. Franz lifted the plane’s nose to stall and hit the waves flat. The fighter slapped down. Instead of melting into the sea, the plane skipped from one wave to the next. As the plane lost speed, its nose grew heavy and it dove into the water. Franz’s body slammed forward before his straps pulled him back. The canopy glass held. From six feet under water, Franz looked up and saw the waves above him. The sea poured in through the hole by Franz’s knee. Streams of water spouted from the instrument panel and the holes in the canopy. The fighter sank, still ...

Franz thought it was a joke until he saw Willi’s eyes. They were genuine with fear. Everyone from a private to a general knew The Party’s secret police force operated with unchecked authority and brutality. The Gestapo had initially come to the airfield looking for Franz’s superiors, unaware that Roedel and Schroer worked from Olympus. Impatient, the Gestapo asked around and someone had pointed them to Willi. “What did you get yourself into?” Willi asked. Franz said he had done nothing wrong. He thought back and admitted he had snuck into the Colosseum on a leave in Rome but nothing worse. Franz told Willi he would confront them. Even if he thought The Party was bullshit, he never said it in the wrong company.

The door to the shack swung open. Steinhoff, the commander of JG-77, entered. The Gestapo captain asked him to leave, but Steinhoff asked for the captain’s rank. “The last time I checked, a major outranks a captain,” Steinhoff said.10 Folding his arms, Steinhoff leaned against a wall behind Franz, his presence and dangling Knight’s Cross adding weight to Franz’s defense. Steinhoff and JG-77 had returned to Trapani a few days prior, on June 13, to relieve JG-27 so the unit could begin to rotate home. Willi had found Steinhoff and summoned him to Franz’s aid. Steinhoff had always hated The Party and had dealt with the Gestapo before. In Russia they brought their inquisition to his unit, then Fighter Wing 52 (JG-52), to investigate the supposed Jewish backgrounds of a few of his pilots. Steinhoff had declined to assist them and had said to the Gestapo leader, “You’ll be lucky if you leave Russia alive.” The man asked if the skies were that unsafe. Steinhoff said, “No, it’s because you just made enemies of forty fighter pilots who have never added a Ju-52 to their victory list, and I think that’s yours sitting on my runway.”

them. It was from Reichsmarschall Goering,

Together with the fighter pilots in France, Norway, and Russia, I can only regard you with contempt. I want an immediate improvement in fighting spirit. If this improvement is not forthcoming, flying personnel from the commander down must expect to be remanded to the ranks and transferred to the eastern front to serve on the ground.

The paper tried to put a heroic spin on the tragic news, calling a one-sided catastrophe “the Battle of Hamburg.” They refused to mention that the bombs had produced a thousand-foot-high tornado of fire that had swirled and swallowed eight square miles of the city. They neglected to describe that the tornado had melted the city’s streets and sucked the air from bomb shelters, killing, in one week, forty-two thousand men, women, and children.* Franz and Willi looked up from their papers and at each other with dismay. In Africa and Sicily they had fought for nothing, for meaningless sand and sea. Now with the front lines over their own soil, it suddenly struck them. They were going home to fight for everything.

“When the first two fighters came at me and opened fire and I saw the twinkling lights, I knew I had made a mistake by volunteering,” Charlie would remember.

The knock always came in the evening. Franz knew it was coming that night; his group of forty pilots had lost nine of their men the week before. And so it happened. A light rapping on his heavy door. Then a heavier knocking. When Franz opened the door, he wanted to throw up his arms. He saw a new pilot standing there, a teenager, maybe seventeen years old. The new rookies these days were always lowly corporals. The boy reported for duty and gave Franz his name, but Franz tried to forget it just as quickly, to keep his own sanity. The boy’s face was white and devoid of lines. He made Franz’s rookies from Graz look like grown men. The rookie clicked his heels and tried to look brave as he gave The Party’s stiff-armed salute. Franz returned the salute the old way, with a hand to his eyebrow. So much had changed since July 20, when a former Afrika Korps officer, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, had tried to assassinate Hitler. Stauffenberg was a Bavarian Catholic opposed to Hitler and had tried to kill him with a briefcase bomb that only wounded the dictator. In the aftermath, Hitler and The Party arrested five thousand suspected “conspirators” and executed two hundred of them. The Party turned paranoid. Suddenly they viewed the “old military” style of salute as a form of resistance, so they made their stiff arm salute mandatory. But Franz was too tired to adapt. The new salute was like the new award Berlin had given Franz on October 1. It was called “the German Cross,” althoug...

Franz looked at his nervous pilots around him and saw the rawest form of bravery. They were to go up against impossible odds. His enemies saw the same bravery. A B-17 pilot, Joseph Deichl, remembered, “When we did see the German fighters queuing up and start making their passes at us, we always thought they must have been on drugs or something because they were absolutely fearless, coming through the formation.”2 Goering, however, attributed his pilots’ inability to stop the bombing raids as “cowardice.” Their grievous losses did not matter to him. He accused his own pilots of sabotaging fuel depots so they wouldn’t have fuel to fly. He told the general of fighters, Galland, that his wing and group commanders would rather “play with themselves on the ground” than fight. Goering told JG-77’s leader, Steinhoff, “The fighter force is going to give battle to the last man. If it does not, it can go and join the infantry.”3 Goering even transmitted a message to group commanders authorizing them to court-martial pilots who had been seen to “run from a fight.” If any pilots were found guilty, Goering wanted them shot in front of their comrades.

Franz’s 109 taxied slowly to a halt along the trees. Its engine shut down, but the canopy did not open. The ground crewmen saw this and ran to the plane. The first to climb the wing popped the canopy open and saw that the windshield’s glass had cracked like a white web. In the center was a hole the diameter of a man’s pinky finger. Grabbing Franz’s shoulders, the crewman pulled his body toward him. Franz fell limply to the canopy rail, his head flopping like a ragdoll. The crewman gasped. Red blood surrounded a black hole of dried blood in Franz’s forehead. A bullet had pierced the windscreen’s supposedly bulletproof glass. The crewman looked at the back of Franz’s head and checked for an exit wound, but there was none. He saw that Franz was still breathing. The crewmen lifted Franz from the fighter. On the ground, Franz slowly regained his senses and opened his eyes.

The people who sat in front of and behind Franz were silent and depressed. Their clothes were worn and tattered. Everyone wore the same weary frown. Franz had heard how the British had sent a few speedy Mosquito bombers over Berlin every night, just enough to trigger the air raid sirens and send people stumbling outside to the bomb shelters, a form of psychological warfare to deny the populace sleep. It worked. Now their tired eyes glanced at Franz in his black leather jacket and gray riding pants. They saw that his black gloves had all their fingers intact. They looked at his thick cheeks and knew he was healthy, while their faces were lean and gaunt from substitute “ersatz” foods. Their “coffee” was made from oats and barley and tinted with an extract taken from coal tar. Their “meat” and “fish” were really just rice cakes flavored with animal fat or fish oil. Their “bread” was made of flour from ground chestnuts. In some cases, the people expanded their rations with pet rabbits and house cats.

“Only you can care for your mother these days.” Franz’s father’s pension and death benefits, Mr. Greisse explained, had dried up like those of every other old soldier to meet the needs of the war.

Franz felt his medical excuse in his pocket. He was days away from an easy chair in Florida’s opulent bar while the rest of Germany suffered in the cold. But Franz now had a problem with that notion. He had seen a little girl living in fear, without sleep, collecting bomb shards for toys. He knew the government of the 44 percent had long abandoned her. He would not join them. His sense of duty had never been to Hitler or The Party or Goering, it was always to Germany. But now, in the war’s last days, Germany had a new face, that of a little girl.

Roedel had proposed they shoot Goering that day, but the others talked him out of it, aware of an awful truth: killing Goering would not solve their problem. They needed him to step down. Stauffenberg could have shot Hitler but instead used a bomb because he knew that Hitler could be replaced by someone equally evil from his entourage. The same rule applied to Goering. Instead of killing him, the fighter leaders decided they would stare down the second most powerful man in the Reich and tell him it was time for him to go. They wanted Galland to take his place, reasoning that maybe he could do something to stop the bombing of Germany and, after consolidating power, maybe he could stand up to Hitler.

“There is still time, sir, to prevent every city in Germany from being reduced to rubble and ashes,” Luetzow said. He told Goering that Galland needed to be reinstated and the 262s taken from the bomber forces and released immediately for fighter missions. Luetzow cited a quartermaster’s report that listed sixty 262s operational for combat operations, fifty-two of which belonged to the bomber forces. Another two hundred of the precious jets were sitting in bombed-out rail yards, stranded, because someone had decided to ship them by rail to save fuel. Goering interrupted Luetzow and reminded him sarcastically that the fighter forces were in a “deplorable state.” Goering told Luetzow with a smirk that in touring the bomber units he saw greater spirit and discipline. The bomber pilots, he said, were healthier and contained more veterans than the fighter forces. Luetzow cut Goering off. “So you have told us time and time again,” Luetzow said. “But you forget that we fighter pilots have been flying missions daily for over five years now. Our young pilots survive a maximum of two or three Reich Defense missions before they’re killed.” Red with rage, Goering shouted, “As if the head of the Air Force was not aware of that!” Luetzow did not break his stone-face composure. So Goering reverted to taunting. He told Luetzow that the real problem was the fighter pilots’ cowardice. Germany needs braver men, he said, “eager for a crack at the enemy,” to challenge the bombers nose to nose....

Luetzow had heard enough. He raised an outstretched finger, ready to tell Goering that compromise was obviously hopeless and that for Germany’s good Goering needed to step down. He never got to utter his words. Goering stood, quaking with rage. “What you’re presenting me with here, gentlemen, is treason! What are you after, Luetzow—do you want to get rid of me? What you’ve schemed up here is a full-scale mutiny!” Goering pounded the table and began cursing irrationally. Foam filled the corners of his mouth. Sweat poured from his brow. His eyes and the veins of his neck bulged as if he was about to explode. Goering turned to Steinhoff and screamed, “Your career is over and so is Galland’s—that coward would not even face me!” Turning to Luetzow, his lip quivering, he added, “And you, Luetzow—I’m going to have you shot!”

GOERING WANTED TO shoot Galland, Luetzow, and Steinhoff but needed time to assemble a case because each man was a national hero. He needed evidence more treasonous than just their act of defiance against him. He needed proof of treachery against the German people. As promised, Goering focused his rage on Galland first. He had Galland confined to his home on the Czech border and sent the Gestapo to dig for dirt on him, something Goering could use in a trial. The Gestapo arrested Galland’s adjutant, bugged his phones, and stole his BMW sports car. With both the Gestapo and the SS investigating him, Galland told his girlfriend, an artist named Monica, that he was flattered—they could just as easily have assassinated him.

But Franz wondered if the Count knew of the 262’s reputation for burning. He doubted the Count knew that the jet’s fuel was made from kerosene derived from coal, fuel housed in tanks in front of, behind, and below the pilot’s seat. Franz had heard Galland bragging to the men who had not flown the 262, “It’s as if angels are pushing you!” Franz knew that he and the pilots around him had outlived their nine lives. On the eve of battle, a new question troubled Franz. What happens when the angels stop pushing?

Steinhoff told the men that landing the 262 was the most dangerous moment of a flight. In the 262, a pilot had to commit to the approach and stick with it. Due to the engine’s tendency to snuff out with quick throttle movements, a pilot could not “pour on the coals” to recover from a bad approach. Instead, he had to anticipate any speed changes far in advance. Having instructed in the 262, Franz knew the engines better than anyone. In jet school, the rules had forbidden him from telling his students anything about the engine’s inner workings. Now, with his comrades listening intently, Franz revealed the engine’s secret flaw. He told them the engine’s fan blades were made from inferior metals that could not resist heat the way they should. Germany could no longer access minerals like cobalt and nickel to make strong blades. If a pilot throttled forward too quickly, heat would build in the engine and melt the blades. “It won’t always kill you,” Franz said. “It will kill the next guy.” He explained that the blades would cool and crack after the engine cooled down, usually once on the ground. On the next flight the blades would be primed to shatter, resulting in catastrophic engine failure.

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.

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.

With JV-44’s table full, Steinhoff looked around and knew that never before had a unit existed with so many legends, “a body of young men in which everyone knew so much about everyone else.”

The field was rough, with white patches where ground crewmen had filled in craters. They called the struggle “the battle between shovel and bomb.” Steinhoff’s jet lurched then rolled forward, gaining speed by the second. The others followed him. About three-fourths of the way along the runway he had nearly reached the required 120 miles per hour to liftoff, when his left tire exploded. His jet veered violently left into the Count’s lane. The Count was lifting into the air as Steinhoff’s left landing gear collapsed. Steinhoff’s left engine and wing slapped the earth. His plane bounced into the air from the impact, flying momentarily on borrowed time. Franz ran to the shack’s doorway. He and the others saw Steinhoff’s plane pitch into the air. They saw the nose of the Count’s plane about to fly into the tail of Steinhoff’s. But just before they could collide, Steinhoff’s jet fell heavily downward. The wheels of the Count’s jet skimmed just past Steinhoff’s tail. In the split second as his plane dropped, Steinhoff prepared to crash. He pulled hard on his shoulder straps, drawing his body into his seat. He knew that if he was knocked unconscious, he would burn to death. In front of the cockpit lay a fuel tank holding 198 sloshing gallons of kerosene. Behind him sat another 330 gallons. Below his feet rested a third tank of 37 gallons. Steinhoff’s jet slammed to earth. The impact stripped both of the jet’s engines as the machine slid, leaving the engines behind. Steinhoff heard...

Inside Goering’s home, where the Reichsmarschall had once smoked his tall pipe and paraded in togas and a hunter’s lederhosen, Goering supervised the removal of his art collection. His men were whisking priceless paintings out the door and ushering them to a bunker in the forest. Galland had expected Goering to be foaming or sinister. Instead, the Reichsmarschall struck him as “deeply depressed.” Goering received Galland with civility. He asked with genuine interest about JV-44’s progress. Galland told Goering that two days prior the unit had launched its most jets—fifteen—on one mission. They had scored their most victories that day, shooting down three B-26 medium bombers and damaging seven others. Galland reluctantly told Goering about Steinhoff’s crash. Goering showed traces of sympathy. He told Galland why he had summoned him. He wished to acknowledge that he had been wrong. He admitted that Galland had been right about the 262 when he said it belonged with the fighter pilots, not the bomber pilots. Then Galland’s greatest enemy said, “I envy you, Galland, for going into action. I wish I were a few years younger and less bulky. If I were, I would gladly put myself under your command.”10 Galland departed Goering’s chalet smirking, eager to tell Luetzow that even though the war was lost, the Man of Ice and the Mutineers had won a battle.

With forty jets now entrusted to him, Franz had his hands full. He was so busy that he had allowed another pilot to fly White 3 on a mission that morning. Franz had downed as many as four bombers in White 3 during the weeks prior, a B-17 or two and several B-26s. He no longer watched them crash to claim them as victories. In fact, Franz had not claimed a victory since the prior August. To him, his score no longer mattered. He wanted only to do his job.

Fresh in Luetzow’s mind was the news of the day. Galland had received a call from Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. Hitler’s minister of armaments, Albert Speer, wanted JV-44 to arrest Goering. More importantly, Speer’s orders to Galland stipulated, “I ask you and your comrades to do everything as discussed to prevent Goering from flying anywhere.” Deep within his bunker, Hitler and Speer had suspected Goering would try to represent Germany and negotiate the country’s surrender to the Americans. “What are you going to do?” Luetzow had asked Galland, nearly smiling. “Ignore the order and stay with the unit,” Galland laughed. Hearing this, Luetzow’s frown had lifted. As Luetzow briefed Franz and the others, hope flickered in his brown eyes. He knew the war was just days from its end. News had escaped Berlin that Hitler was staying in the doomed city to die as eight Soviet Armies tightened their noose of encirclement. The SS had arrested Goering because Galland had declined to do so. With his enemy Goering under arrest and Hitler surrounded by Soviet Red Stars, Luetzow felt a surge of optimism. All he wanted was to outlive the war, his honor intact. To him, this meant serving until the arrival of peace.

“Sir, want to form up?” someone asked. Luetzow did not reply. “Is there a problem, sir?” The Count asked. Still no reply came from Luetzow. “Colonel Luetzow, want to form up?” someone asked again. No answer. “Sir, if there is a problem with your radio, rock your wings,” someone offered. Luetzow continued to fly straight and level. “Something’s wrong,” someone stated. “But he’s flying well enough,” someone else said. “His radio must have taken a hit,” the Count concluded. The Count called the orphanage and asked if they were talking with Luetzow on another channel. The orphanage said no, but they would try calling him. Franz found himself holding his breath between transmissions. Seconds later the orphanage reported back. They had received no reply. Luetzow’s plane banked gracefully to the right. When it faced south toward the snowcapped Alps, its wings leveled.

Franz dropped his oxygen mask from his face and breathed in heavy gasps. He knew Luetzow had never wanted to join JV-44. But Luetzow was a religious man, of the Lutheran faith, who believed the rule that Marseille had once voiced: “We must only answer to God and our comrades.” Like the others, Luetzow knew he had made a moral mistake by serving his country. He would answer to God for that. Luetzow had reported to JV-44 out of duty to his comrades.

Inside the hangar a radio blared the same war news as the radio at the pilots’ alert shack. Everyone kept an ear tuned, waiting to hear “It’s done,” so they could go home or surrender. After Luetzow’s death, Galland had called the pilots together on the airfield and addressed the men as they stood in a line. “For us the war is over,” he said. He would no longer order anyone to take off—they could only volunteer. “Whoever wants to go home may do so,” he added. A few men thanked him and left. One cited his fiancée, another his sick parents. But someone else said, “We fight until the end.” Galland’s eyes twinkled and he replied, “I am proud to belong to the last fighter pilots of the German Air Force.”

To the west, a lone 262 flew through the cloud of gun smoke and explosions. Smoke trailed from its right engine and its wheels were down. Franz saw that it was White 3. He had loaned her to Galland to fly against B-26s. Over the field, Galland cut both engines and the jet touched down with a gentle whistle. Galland steered toward the alert shack as the P-47s flew over him without firing. The American pilots were struck speechless at the sight of such audacity. In the middle of the field, White 3’s front tire deflated with each turn until it was flat. It had taken a bullet. Stranded, Galland hobbled from the jet, his right knee bloody. He had been hit by a bullet’s fragments during his earlier attack on the bombers. Rockets burst behind him as the P-47s strafed from one direction then another. Galland dove into the first hole he reached. There the thought struck him how “wretched” it felt to jump from “the fastest fighter in the world and into a bomb crater.”4 A mechanic raced toward Galland in a kettenkrad. Without stopping, the mechanic reached an arm out to Galland, who grabbed the mechanic’s forearm and swung aboard the vehicle. The mechanic steered for the alert shack while Galland hung on. The P-47s’ bullets tossed the dirt around the kettenkrad but missed both the mechanic and Galland, who both dove for cover when they reached the shack. Franz saw White 3 sitting alone on the field as the fighters ripped overhead shooting everything but her. Over the noise of gunfire...

A mechanic started a truck and Franz hopped in. They raced to the village of Oberweissenfeld, north of the airfield. Pirchan had crashed between two houses. The people had him out already, lying there on a mattress, right beside the airplane. Pirchan’s head had slammed into the fighter’s gun sight, and his brain was exposed. Franz held him as he thrashed with pain. Pirchan asked Franz to tell his mother and sister good-bye for him. Franz promised he would. He gave the young fighter pilot a shot of pain reliever and the boy died in his arms.

Franz found the experience of leaving his homeland easier than he had thought it would be. In Germany, the ghosts of the war were close to home. Whenever a plane flew overhead, Franz thought of his young pilots. He saw the suffering in the eyes of his countrymen. He also remembered how some of them had turned on him. In the forests and camps of Germany, Franz saw the ghosts of the Holocaust, the crimes of the minority that had spoiled every German fighting man’s honor. One German fighter pilot spoke for the fighter forces when he wrote, “The atrocities committed under the sign of the Swastika deserve the most severe punishment. The Allies ought to leave the criminals to the German fighting soldiers to bring to justice.”