A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (46 page)

The next morning that pilot took a seat at the unit’s table during breakfast. He was Captain Walter “the Count” Krupinski. He had been Steinhoff’s wingman on the Eastern Front. The Count looked more Polish than German, having been born near the Polish border. His forehead was wide, his chin was strong, and his brown eyes were round and friendly. He wore riding pants with wide flares to play up to his nickname, one given by his comrades because he had expensive taste in wine but came from humble origins. He was actually the son of a soldier.

Though the Count had a loud reputation, the ace who took his seat at JV-44’s table was a quieter version of himself. He had checked into Florida to recover from burns sustained the prior August and to mourn. Five months earlier, his younger brother, Paul, had died in a U-boat off the Norwegian coast. Ever since he lost his brother, the Count’s eyes no longer flickered with mischief. “He loved life itself,” a German propaganda postcard had once boasted of him, the aristocratic hero of the common folk who now wore the Knight’s Cross. Before his brother had been killed, the Count had loved wine, women, and song. A year prior he and Germany’s top ace, Lieutenant Erich “Bubi” Hartmann, had been summoned to Berchtesgaden in southeastern Germany, to receive decorations from Hitler. Hartmann’s comrades called him “Bubi” or “Little Boy,” because he had a childlike face, bright blue eyes, and thick blond hair. The night before the ceremony, the Count and Hartmann celebrated their momentary freedom from the war by drinking champagne and mixing it with cognac. The next day, drunk on their feet, they reported to Hitler. When the dictator dangled new Knight’s Crosses with Oak Leaves around their necks, the pilots wobbled, unable to stand rigid. The Count had trouble clicking his heels to greet Hitler because he was fighting the urge to vomit. Hitler stopped momentarily when he smelled the booze seeping
from the Count’s pores. After they had received their awards, the Count thought a cigarette would settle him down. He forgot that Hitler did not drink or smoke and pulled out his silver cigarette case to light up. Hitler saw this and told him to stop his “disgusting” habit. Instead of punishing his drunken pilots, Hitler regaled them with his plans to reverse the losing tide on the Eastern Front. After the Count and Hartmann left the ceremony, they both needed another drink. “He’s a raving lunatic!” the Count had said of Hitler. Hartmann chided him: “I told you so, I told you so!”
³

When Franz met the Count that morning, he knew that behind the legendary pilot’s relaxed demeanor he carried a heavy secret. Roedel had told Franz how the Count had watched Steinhoff dispatch the Soviet pilot trapped in his burning fighter and had agreed to Steinhoff’s request to shoot him if he was ever in a similar predicament. All pilots feared a fiery death. Franz had been burned in Sicily. The Count had been burned in a crash the prior August. 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?

THE NEXT MORNING, APRIL 2, 1945

The pilots of JV-44 stood high on a blast pen surrounding the 262 on the ground. They looked down and marveled that the slender jet looked wider and shorter from above. There were twenty of them, all the pilots in JV-44. Only nine were officers like Franz. Each had flown a lifetime in combat hours, but some, like the Count, had never even
sat in a jet. By unspoken agreement, they all wore the same classic black leather jackets and flying pants to summon all the machismo as they could muster.

In the blast pen beneath his pilots, Galland leaned against the wall, his arms folded. In his place, Steinhoff, Franz, and Hohagen taught the lesson. While Franz and Hohagen stood along the leading edge of the 262’s wing, Steinhoff paced back and forth atop the wing with a pointer stick. Even those pilots who had flown the 262 listened, because the 262 was a dangerous machine that a pilot could never fully master.

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’s comrades nodded. Franz knew he, Steinhoff, and Hohagen were trying to teach in a day what he had usually taught in eight weeks of jet school. But the men standing above him were no ordinary pilots.

T
HE SIGHT OF
his pilots standing on the blast pen inspired Galland to take Trautloft’s list and go to work. Goering and Hitler often derogatorily called Galland “the actor,” but like a movie star with far-reaching connections, Galland shined up his charm and called in favors, siphoning supplies from the Air Force to JV-44. He-111 bombers arrived from factories in northern Germany and unloaded experimental under-wing rockets. Trucks pulled up and dumped crates of Jumo 004 jet engines. Near the hangars, tanker trucks filled the airfield’s underground fuel tank with kerosene jet fuel. Galland sent his pilots to factories, and they flew back in refurbished 262s.

The Count’s name on JV-44’s roster helped Steinhoff’s recruiting. Whispers began floating among Germany’s remaining fighter squadrons that the Count had cast his lot with the Mutineers. Pilots began sneaking away from their units to join JV-44, and combat-proven instructors in Trautloft’s flying school asked to transfer to Galland. Trautloft obliged, secretly funneling them under Goering’s nose. Franz remarked to Galland that Marseille would have joined the unit. Galland agreed but reminded Franz of Marseille’s disregard for The Party and all things military. “He never would have lasted this long,” Galland said. Franz nodded at Galland’s compliment to Marseille. A rumor began that to join JV-44 a pilot had to wear the Knight’s Cross. When Franz heard this, he laughed because only a black tie decorated his neck.

*
Some of the 262’s parts were actually made by slave laborers in underground factories, a Third Reich crime against the workers that also put the pilots of such jets in danger of flying a sabotaged or poorly constructed machine.

*
No one knows exactly why Galland chose the designation “Jagdverband 44/JV-44” or Fighter Band 44, although many suggest it was his tongue-in-cheek reference to the year 1944, when Goering had destroyed the fighter forces.

†
The bomb group’s PR officer would write of the raid: “It’s daily more apparent that the Luftwaffe’s last stand relies on racy jet-propelled fighters. The surest place to smash them is in the incubator…. That’s why the attack on Leipheim, assembly and testing center for Me-262s, represents a gigantic air battle won before the breathless Jerry could swing his saved-up Sunday punch.”

THREE DAYS LATER, APRIL 5, 1945, 9:30 A.M.

T
HE COLD SUN
seemed barely to rise above the airfield as Franz and his comrades lounged around the alert shed in their flight gear. The ground around them glittered with frost. The pilots nervously smoked cigarettes and leaned back in their straight-legged chairs, acting nonchalant. Hohagen stood along a window of the alert shack with his ear glued to a field phone. Unlike the others, he was not dressed to fly, because he was coordinating the day’s operations. Every few minutes he relayed a message from the orphanage, the grid coordinates of the Four Motors, a countdown as the bombers neared Southern Germany.

Franz and his comrades knew that one thousand Four Motors and six hundred escort fighters were coming. The radar men had been tracking them since they departed England, and now spotter girls were monitoring them with field glasses.

Franz and the others were eager to fly on what would be JV-44’s
first combat mission in strength from its new base. It would not be the unit’s baptism of fire, however. Three days earlier, just hours after he had learned to fly the 262, the Count had taken a jet to buzz Florida and show his friends he was back in the cockpit. During his flight, the orphanage radioed him to tell him to come home because P-38s had been spotted nearby. Instead, the Count had attacked the P-38s, thinking “it would be nice” to score on his first mission.
¹
But he overestimated his speed, overshot the P-38s, and fired wildly, his shots missing.

Now the Count sat next to Franz, his knees bouncing. Other pilots paced. Franz felt the same anxiety, a new worry he had never faced in the war, the question of who would be chosen to fly. Out of the unit’s eighteen planes, half sat without engines in the blast pens. Their engines were in nearby villages, at auto shops where mechanics repaired them with tools once used to fix cars. Only seven planes were flyable. When Galland and Steinhoff approached, dressed to fly, Franz saw them with relief. The waiting was over.

The pilots snapped to attention, but Galland told them to relax. Unfolding a map on a table, Galland told the men to gather around. Using his finger, he explained that the bomber stream had split into small elements to hit multiple targets across Southern Germany. He tapped the map. Steinhoff would take off first and lead a flight of the five most reliable jets to intercept the bombers east of Munich. Galland would lead a separate mission afterward, of whatever jets remained flightworthy.

Steinhoff announced the pilots who would fly with him. Count. Lieutenant Fahrmann. Lieutenant Stigler. Sergeant Nielinger. And that was all. Hohagen shouted new grid coordinates to Galland—the Four Motors were within range.

Galland reminded his pilots what they already knew. Hundreds of escort fighters would be waiting for them. He told them what they tried to forget, that jet pilots had become the Allied fighters’ top targets,
both in the air and in their parachutes.
^*
Galland had just heard from Fighter Wing 7 that one of their pilots, Major Rudi Sinner, had been strafed the day before after bailing out. Mustangs had shot up Sinner’s jet, and he was badly burned in the fire. After he had bailed out, he landed in a farmer’s field, tangled in his chute. The Mustangs came back around and strafed him but missed. Sinner played dead until they left. He was injured but alive.