A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (44 page)

FOUR DAYS LATER, JANUARY 23, 1945, LECHFELD AIR BASE

B
ENEATH THE HANGING
lights in a vast wooden hangar, Franz sat in the cockpit of a 262, but one not attached to an aircraft. Instead, it was just a mock cockpit that sat on wheels. An instructor leaned over him with a checklist, testing Franz, who practiced emergency procedures with blinding speed, his hands flipping inoperative switches, pulling dummy levers, and calling out numbers from fake gauges. Other pilots in other mock cockpits sat around Franz, undergoing the same training.

Located in Southern Germany, Lechfeld was the hub of Germany’s jet training because Messerschmitt’s headquarters lay in the nearby town of Augsburg. Instead of retiring to Florida, Franz had landed a slot in jet school after pestering Roedel, who secured him the appointment, one that long lines of pilots desired. But jet school was not what Franz had expected. Three weeks into the eight-week course, he had not even sat in a real 262 and instead had flown just two hours of refresher flights in old twin-engine planes.

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 following 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.