When Roedel’s driver passed a group of 109s whose cowlings sported leopard heads and the faces of spooked natives surrounded by the outline of Africa, Roedel indicated to Franz that the planes belonged to Squadron 3, home to Germany’s most famous pilot of the time—Lieutenant Hans-Joachim Marseille, the twenty-two-year-old ace known as the “virtuoso of all fighter pilots.” He had already destroyed more than fifty enemy planes.
