Author Description

Adolf Galland was the most famous German fighter pilot of World War II, and until his death in February 1996 he was the last surviving senior German combat commander of that war. An "ace" pilot with more than 100 air-to-air victories in the West, he was also the last living recipient of the supreme decoration for gallantry and leadership - the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, awarded to only 27 men among the millions who served. His combat career spanned an extraordinary period in aviation history, from flying open-cockpit biplanes in the Spanish Civil War, through command of a wing of Messerschmitt Bf109s in the fiercest fighting of the Battle of Britain, to leadership of a unique "aces' squadron" flying the world's first jet fighters against impossible odds in the last weeks of the war.<br/>But Adolf Galland's story is much more than the straightforward account of a fighter pilot's war. His meteoric promotion made him, at 30, the youngest general in the German armed forces; and his appointment as inspector-general of fighter forces brought him into regular and sometimes perilous contact with the leaders of the Third Reich. He was the recipient of Hitler's private musings about his global war aims; he was the fearless champion of the fighting pilots against the ranting disloyalty of Goering; he worked closely with the brilliant munitions minister Albert Speer; and in the end his outspoken refusal to compromise brought dismissal, and investigation by the Gestapo - his life or death finally turning on the result of a single telephone call.