The First and The Last

Adolf Galland

• Publisher: Reading Essentials
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9783965448476
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

A fearless leader with 104 victories to his name, Galland was a legendary hero in Germany's Luftwaffe. Now he offers an insider's look at the division's triumphs in Poland and France and the last desperate battle to save the Reich. "The clearest picture yet of how the Germans lost their war in the air."--Time.

l

The First

After the Blitzkrieg in the east followed the sit-down war in the west. It was a terrific nervous strain for all concerned. I commanded all three squadrons of our wing in turn for a fortnight while the respective commanders were on leave. There were continuous take-off alarms—false ones, of course, because the ominous siren wail or control tower orders that sent us zooming into the air, consuming considerable amounts of material and fuel, were usually based on errors or illusions. One radar report of a mass approach of enemy aircraft, for example, turned out to be a flight of birds. One day, however, in the lower Rhine area somebody was really shot down during one of these alarms. It was one of our planes, an FW-58 Weihe. She was piloted by the squadron leader. Nothing else happened.

We were delighted when at last the war of nerves changed into a shooting war. Behind the scenes at German army H.Q. there had so far been a confusing indecision. Originally Hitler wanted to turn westward soon after the conclusion of the Polish campaign, in order to have his rear free against the archenemy, which in spite of the temporary pact was after all the Soviet Union. The elder generals, however, led by Haider, Chief of the General Staff, and von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, were violently opposed to such a step. Facing the 85 French, 23 Belgian, and 8 English divisions were 62 German divisions ready for action, but these had also to guard the eastern frontier of the Reich. Haider and von Brauchitsch not only threatened to resign but were already seriously considering the idea of a coup d'état.

The postponement some dozen times of the German offensive on the Western front, between November, 1939, and May, 1940, was due not only to weather considerations, politics, personnel, armaments, etc., but also to chance. This could be qualified as lucky or unlucky according to the time and the point of view under consideration. On January 10, a Luftwaffe major flew from Munster to Bonn, carrying with him the entire plan of operations for the offensive in the west. In bad weather he was blown off his course and made a forced landing on Belgian soil. He did not manage to destroy the documents in time and they fell into the hands of the Allies. A new plan had to be worked out which after a further delay caused by bad weather was finally put into execution on May 10, 1940.

On the morning of May 12 when I flew in company with another plane over the front, our troops had already penetrated deep into Holland and Belgium. During those first days of the campaign in the west, together with the 8th Flying Corps we gave fighter cover to the German advance at Maastricht. As a Number 1 of our wing I was so overburdened with staff work, intelligence orders, changes of base, and conferences that I had literally to steal away on any sortie I wanted to make. What the others regarded merely as a daily duty was for me something I had to get to by tricks and ruses. On the third day of the campaign, May 12, 1940, I managed to score my first kill.

It is true to say that the first kill can influence the whole future career of a fighter pilot. Many to whom the first victory over the opponent has been long denied either by unfortunate circumstances or by bad luck can suffer from frustration or develop complexes they may never rid themselves of again. I was lucky. My first kill was child's play.

We did not see much of the English in those days. Occasionally we met a few Blenheims. The Belgians for the most flew antiquated Hurricanes, in which even more experienced pilots could have done little against our new ME-109E. We outstripped them in speed, in rate of climb, in armament, and above all in flying experience and training.

Therefore it was not particularly heroic when some five miles west of Liege my flight companion and I dove from an altitude of about 12,000 feet on a flight of eight Hurricanes flying 3000 feet below us. The route had been practiced innumerable times. The Hurricanes had not yet spotted us. I was neither excited nor did I feel any hunting fever. "Come on, defend yourself!" I thought as soon as I had one of the eight in my gun sight. I closed in more and more without being noticed. "Someone ought to warn him!" But that would have been even more stupid than the strange thoughts which ran through my head at that moment. I gave him my first burst from a distance which, considering the situation, was still too great. I was dead on the target. The poor devil at last noticed what it was all about. He took rather clumsy avoiding action which brought him into the fire of my companion. The other seven Hurricanes made no effort to come to the aid of their comrade in distress, but made off in all directions. After a second attack my opponent spun down in spirals minus his rudder. Parts of the wings came off. Another burst would have been waste of ammunition. I immediately went after another of the scattered Hurricanes. This one tried to escape by diving, but I was soon on her tail at a distance of 100 yards. The Belgian did a half-roll and disappeared through a hole in the clouds. I did not lose track of him and attacked again from very close quarters. The plane zoomed for a second, stalled, and dove vertically to the ground from a height of only 1500 feet. During a patrol flight that afternoon I shot down my third opponent out of a formation of five Hurricanes near Tirlemont.

I took this all quite naturally, as a matter of course. There was nothing special about it. I had not felt any excitement and I was not even particularly elated by my success. That only came much later, when we had to deal with much tougher adversaries, when each relentless aerial combat was a question of "you or me." On that particular day I had something approaching a twinge of conscience. The congratulations of my superiors and my comrades left an odd taste in my mouth. An excellent weapon and luck had been on my side. To be successful the best fighter pilot needs both.

Two days later on May 14, the Dutch army capitulated. The Belgian army held out 14 days longer. The Belgian fortifications, which were known from World War I to be particularly hard nuts to crack, were taken in a few days, thanks to the extensive support given by the Luftwaffe, using Stukas and landing paratroops under fighter cover.

The taking of Fort Eben Emael gave the young German paratroopers the opportunity of causing a sensation by staging a classical example of a paratroop operation. This action, to which our wing gave cover, may give some indication of the very original tactics these troops employed. The sector where they were to be dropped lay deep inside Belgium, and the action could not be reconciled with the general plan of German operations, as far as this was known to us. What dropped from the transport planes and sailed down to earth were—dummies. On landing these invasion dummies set off a complicated mechanism which produced a good imitation of battle noises. The Belgians were deceived and flung considerable forces into the supposed danger area. Their absence from important defense positions was of great advantage to the attacking Germans.

The German army performed astonishing feats of war during their rapid advance. Again, as in Poland, the secret of these unbelievable successes was the cooperation between the fast-moving army and the Luftwaffe, where every move was carefully planned in advance and executed with precision.

Soon we pressed on to Charleville. Our aerodrome nestled among the foothills of the Ardennes. This was a very advantageous terrain for camouflage and defense, and this hidden position in the valley was once nearly fatal to my fellow pilot and myself. On May 19 as it was growing dark I shot down a Potez near the ground. This was during the so-called Operation Abendsegen. The French fighters used the twilight hour to strafe our advance routes.

The key to the success of the French campaign lay at Sedan. The breakthrough in the Ardennes by strong mechanized armored columns was one of the most daring and revolutionary and therefore successful ideas of the German war leaders during World War II. It emanated from Manstein, was rejected by von Brauchitsch and Haider, recognized by Hitler as excellent, and adopted against all opposition. Gud-erian put it into execution. Haider's original plan of operations was based on the Schlieffen plan of World War I and again entailed the risk that the offensive might come to a standstill on the Somme, while the strong right wing of the German army advancing through Belgium would meet the main force of the Allied army head on. The Allied General Staff believed as little as did Haider and von Brauchitsch in the possibility of a major breakthrough in the Ardennes. The unexpected success enabled the Germans to annihilate the superior forces of the enemy in rapid operations in which the army and the Luftwaffe combined.

The speed with which these operations were executed was a determining factor. The army therefore demanded energetic countermeasures against the French low-level attacks.

Following a suggestion of mine, the entire wing on a broad front combed the spearhead area at nightfall. Unfortunately without results. At last I spotted one of the French hedgehoppers. A wild chase began at the height of only a few feet. We raised the dust on the fields. The Frenchman flew with great skill, using all the cover the countryside offered. I had already hit him several times and shot away part of his tail. Nevertheless he still did his best to shake me off. I had to keep my eyes skinned because visibility was getting worse at each moment. The time was 21:45. Suddenly we were on top of a village. I still can see the church with its high steeple looming up in front of me. The Frenchman zoomed over the church. At that moment I got him, and he crashed on the far side of the village.

A few days later Milch came to visit us at Charleville, and decorated me with the Iron Cross 1st class in recognition of seven victories. I had only shot down French and Belgian planes. In addition to obsolete Hurricanes the pilots flew French types: Moräne, Bloch, and Potez. Our ME-109E was technically superior to them all.

My first serious encounters with the R.A.F. took place during the battle of Dunkirk. Lord Gort with commendable skill rescued his defeated expeditionary force: with great loss of arms and equipment but nevertheless almost intact, together with 120,000 Frenchmen, making a total of 338,000 men, while the R.A.F. made a great and successful effort to provide air cover for the remarkable evacuation operation.

Although Dunkirk was a heavy blow for England and had a political rather than a military effect on her French ally, for Germany it was nothing like a total victory. Goring decided upon the destruction of the encircled British expeditionary force. After the victories over the Polish and French air forces he was more than ever a partisan of Douhet's Stuka idea. The army was amazed and alarmed by the irrevocable order given to the Panzer columns to halt their advance on Dunkirk. Some even thought that Hilter intended to spare the English foe in order to arrive at an honorable peace with Great Britain after the fall of France.

In addition to political grounds there were those of a military nature. In spite of the initial German successes Hitler still retained from World War I a great respect for his French antagonist. Therefore it was conceivable that he did not trust his own success. In any case he feared a threat to his armored divisions as they wheeled to the west and to the northwest from French forces, should they suddenly attack from the southeast—an intention Gamelin actually nursed although he was never able to carry it out. Hitler's knowledge of the battlefields of Flanders also originated from World War I. He regarded them as unsuitable for large-scale tank operations and saw in these fens a possible grave for his armored divisions. Ultimately it may have been Goring who was responsible for the fatal order to stop the advance. General Warlimont, Chief of Operations at German G.H.Q., in a conversation with Captain Liddell Hart on this subject, informed him that he had heard Göring's reply to Hitler: "My Luftwaffe will complete the encirclement and will close the pocket at the coast from the air." Guderian remarked, "I believe it was Göring's vanity which caused Hitler to make this momentous decision."

In any case after this any sparing of the British enemy was out of the question. On the contrary, Goring made the greatest effort to solve this problem with his Luftwaffe. It merely proved that the strength of the German Luftwaffe was inadequate, especially in the difficult conditions for reinforcement created by the unexpectedly quick advance and against a determined and well-led enemy who was fighting with tenacity and skill. Dunkirk should have been an emphatic warning for the leaders of the German Luftwaffe.

On May 29 I flew a sortie with the staff flight in this sector. We spotted a formation of British Blenheim bombers below us. Two of them were shot down and crashed into the sea. The second one escaped me for some time by skillful evasive action, until low over the water my bullets ripped open her oil tank. She hit the water at a shallow angle and sank immediately. When I landed at Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, I found that my ME-109 was covered with oil. It was over Dunkirk too that I shot down my first British Spitfire.

During the embarkation of the British troops thick clouds of smoke lay over the battlefield. The huge stores of fuel and war material had been set on fire. As number 1A of our wing it was my duty to fly the aircraft on our commander's flank. Lieutenant Colonel Ibel had been a pilot in World War I. This gruff Bavarian was very popular with us. He was no longer a youngster, and the energy with which he tried to keep up to date with modern fighter aircraft and flying called for the greatest respect. I flew with him that day through the thick gray-black clouds of smoke, which rose to a great height, when suddenly a wing of Spitfires dove on us. We both saw them at the same time. Almost simultaneously we warned each other over the intercom. However we reacted differently, which normally should not have happened, since I was supposed to accompany the other aircraft. I saw my commander vanish in the smoke, and prayed that he might escape unscathed. I singled out the British pilot, blazing away with all I had, not seriously expecting much more than a strengthening of my slightly battered self-confidence. The Spits roared past me, tailing my commander, sure of their target. I could not find him again. He did not return with the others to Saint-Pol, our base. We were already really worried when late at night he arrived on foot. The Spitfires caught him, but he had managed to get away with a lucky crash landing.

Dunkirk fell on July 4. The Dutch, Belgian, and British armies no longer existed. France stood alone, her Ninth Army beaten at Sedan. The First Army had capitulated at Lille. The German war machine rolled irresistibly through France. Gam-elin was replaced by Weygand as commander-in-chief. Not the Oise, the Marne, nor the Seine proved to be a barrier capable of halting the German advance or of slowing it down in the least. The enemy air force was heavily damaged and greatly disorganized by the blows of the German Luftwaffe and the quick German advance. The extensive losses it had sustained began to make themselves felt. Resistance visibly decreased. We saw little of the R.A.F.

The death blow to the Armée de l'Air was supposed to be Operation Paula, large-scale attacks on the airfields and French aircraft factories in the sector of Paris, for which 300 bombers and Stukas were employed. We provided the air cover. The success of this undertaking is debatable. German and French reports agreed on the one point that 25 to 30 German planes were lost. Anyhow Operation Paula was the single attempt at strategic air warfare during the French campaign.

On June 3 I had just shot down an unidentified aircraft similar to a Curtiss, when we—I was flying with Captain Ankum-Frank—encountered two flights of Moranes. There was an incredible dogfight. The only thing to do was to attack first and then try to escape as best we could: I closed in on the tail-end plane and banked still steeper! The fellow flew well, but his aircraft was inferior to mine. At last, from a short distance, I managed to get in a broadside on a climbing turn. He burst into flame. I avoided him only by inches. I bent a blade on my propeller and the right astern against his wing. My aerial was shaved off: it had been about three feet long. The Moräne spun down in flames and crashed into a forest not far from Meaux, north of Paris. No time to lose! I closed in on the next one! Well riddled, she went vertically down with a black smoke trail. I could not observe the crash because the rest of the Moranes were harassing me, so I could not register this kill. It would have been my thirteenth.

We entered Paris on June 14 without a shot being fired. German jack boots stamped down the Champs-Elysées. A guard of honor of the German Wehrmacht drew up at the grave of the unknown soldier. In the boites of Montmartre appeared signs Man Spricht Deutsch. The government had fled to Bordeaux. Marshal Pétain become president and proposed armistice on June 16.

Quite unexpectedly, as so often happens in the service, I was transferred to the 26th Fighter Group, Schlageter, before the French campaign was finished. I was to take over the command of the 3rd Squadron, stationed on a rather God forsaken and primitive airfield. It was a hot summer day when I arrived. I walked across the runway in my flying kit. No flags had been put out to welcome me. A few of the ground crew were standing by an old-fashioned well. I had a murderous thirst and a great need for a wash. I asked very politely if it were possible to get a pail of water. "Certainly," was the reply, "the whole well's full, only you'll have to wind it up yourself." The men could never have guessed that I was their new commander! I spared them the shock and wound up my pail of water as I had been told. This, by the way, was a better introduction to my new squadron than the fact that I went up the same afternoon and returned with a bag of two.

On June 22, 43 days after the start of the armed conflict, Marshal Pétain signed the truce in the Forest of Compiègne.

Our last action station was Villacoublay, which because of its closeness to Paris became quite a favorite.

After the signing of the truce our orders were, "Home to the Reich," and we were transferred to Munchen-Gladbach to be refitted. Our losses in men and material had been small. Naturally I took every opportunity to go and see my parents, for my home was only a few flying minutes' time away. Then came a surprise transfer order to Döberitz. Was another Or-log about to start? No, we were to screen a state function at which Hitler in his well-known speech made the peace offer to England. One bomb on the Kroll Opera House would actually have eliminated the entire German High Command at one fell swoop, so the precaution seemed well justified. At that time we were still prepared to support Göring's claim: "My name is not Goring if an enemy aircraft is ever seen over Germany!" Later these words were to be quoted with steadily increasing bitterness.

After an investiture of army commanders at the Kroll Opera House, a wave of promotion ran through the entire force, It reached me on July 18, 1940, when I was made a major. At first my position and duties were unchanged. From Döberitz we returned to Munchen-Gladbach.

On August 1, when Marshal Kesselring pinned the Knight's Cross on my tunic after my seventeenth kill and many completed low-level attacks, we were already stationed on the military airfields in the Pas de Calais area. Opposite lay the English coast, upon which a few days later the German Blitz was going to be unleashed.

Kesselring had his advanced base at Cap Gris Nez. During the investiture two fighter planes flew over at great height. "What are those?" he asked me. "Spitfires, Herr General-feldmarshal," I replied. He laughed. "The first to congratulate you . . ."

2

The Battle of Britain Starts

The strateg...

Table of contents

• cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Contents
• Publisher's Note
• 1 The First
• 2 The Battle of Britain Starts
• 3 A Battle for Life and Death
• 4 "Bombs on England"
• 5 Between "Sea Lion" and "Barbarossa"
• 6 New Strategic Ground
• 7 A Nightmare Becomes a Reality
• 8 The Eastern Front
• 9 "War Is No Game of Cricket"
• 10 A Somber Chapter
• 11 Forward or Backward?
• 12 Operation Thunderbolt Begins
• 13 The Channel Dash
• 14 Between Norway and Africa
• 15 A Glance at the Other Side
• 16 The Hour Has Struck
• 17 Following the Latest Bomb Crater
• 18 The House Without a Roof
• 19 The Fateful Hour for the Luftwaffe
• 20 From One Crisis to Another
• 21 The Struggle with the Enemy—and Our Leaders
• 22 In Between Lay Germany
• 23 Chastisement
• 24 The Beginning of the End
• 25 "Where Is the Luftwaffe?"
• 26 The "Great Blow"
• 27 What Possibilities Did We Have?
• 28 The Jet-fighter Tragedy
• 29 The Last