RECENT DEATH OF ADOLF GALLAND FIGHTER PILOT
TAnder9192
had suffered a stroke a couple of weeks ago and never really recovered.
This posting is those historian tyupes who would not find out in their
local newspapers. I have the AP press statement if any one is interested I
will try and scan it .
BIG TODD
MARK JOHNSON
Robert Oehler
Hey Big Todd,
Thanks for the scoop. I would have never gotten the news without your
posting. I'm sorry to hear about the passing of an important historical
figure.
Thanks Again
Nick Kiriokos
some of the worlds best.
Nick Kiriokos
Gernot Hassenpflug
another of the fewer and fewer passes on and more of history is lost for
ever... Could someone please post an obituary, as in the New York Times,
please?
Studnets
OR ANY THING. PLEASE POST THE OBIT. WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT. ARE THERE ANY
MORE OF THESE MEN ALIVE?
Jennings Heilig
WHY ARE YOU YELLING? WE CAN ALL HEAR YOU JUST FINE!
jknaus
post something in our paper. It is from a fighter base so it will be read
accross a number of areas.
Scott Atchison
Don't forget Mackie Steinhoff
--
________________________________________________________________________
| Scott Atchison |"Where did all these f_____g |
| CAPT USAF |Indians come from?" |
| LAFB, TX |General Custer at Little Big Horn. |
| Sa...@ix.netcom.com Opinions are my own, not the Air Forces's |
________________________________________________________________________
Edmund Hon
Damn...another one gone.
What other top WW2 ace are still alive today?
RAF: Johnnie Johnson is. I think Robert Stanford Tuck still is. Douglas
Bader passed away in the late 80s. "Sailor" Malan?
Free French: Is Pierre Clostermann still alive? I love his book _The Big
Show_.
Luftwaffe: I think there's still a bunch of them around.
USAAF/USN/USMC: ? (Enlighten me please)
Japan: ?
USSR: ?
ObModels: How many of you are going to build a "commemorative" Bf109 with
Galland markins, Mickey Mouse and all?
--
/// __ / ax...@freenet.carleton.ca
/// /_ dmund /
/// /_/_/ / "He is a genius. I have goosebumps just watching him think."
/// / /on / - Danielle Chase, _My So-Called Life_
Vesa Halme
>Damn...another one gone.
>What other top WW2 ace are still alive today?
Finland: At least our top ace, Eino Ilmari "Illu" Juutilainen (94 and 1/6
kills) is still alive. Our #2, Hans "Hasse" Wind (75 kills) passed away last
year.
Vesa Halme
war...@vmhalme.pp.fi
http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/vmhalme
Abe Lynn
> What other top WW2 ace are still alive today?
> RAF: Johnnie Johnson is. I think Robert Stanford Tuck still is. Douglas
> Bader passed away in the late 80s. "Sailor" Malan?
If I'm not mistaken, the NY Times Obit. mentioned that Robert Stanford
Tuck died recently, as well.
Abe Lynn
Martin Waligorski
...(silence)...
CHM554
able to attend: one fo the featured events was the presence of three WW II
Luftwaffe pilots, one of whom had known and been decorated by Hitler
himself. The dinner given in their honor was sold-out and the line for
their autographs in the vending area during the show was never shorter
than 30 people long anytime I passed.
Am I the only one that is struck by the irony of this?
Here are men responsible for the deaths and injury of (jointly) hundreds
of Allied lives in WW II...and the sons, nephews, etc. of these demised
veterans are queuing up to adulate and faun over them as heros.
Do not misunderstand, I appreciate the ability to recognize a person's
superior talents and achievement of greatness, but there are Allied Aces
still alive! Why not invite them?
I did not have the poor breeding it would have taken to confront these
Aryan knights, but I would have liked to have heard their thoughts on
being the object of the admiration of the descendants of the men they had
slain.
Randy J. Ray
> I attended the IPMS Nationals in Omaha. For those of you who were not
> able to attend: one fo the featured events was the presence of three WW II
> Luftwaffe pilots, one of whom had known and been decorated by Hitler
> himself. The dinner given in their honor was sold-out and the line for
> their autographs in the vending area during the show was never shorter
> than 30 people long anytime I passed.
>
> Am I the only one that is struck by the irony of this?
I've been waiting for someone to take this point of view. I admit, though, I
expected someone along the lines (and bluster) of tempest. CHM554 instead is
taking a less confrontational, more philosophical approach. For that, I thank
in advance.
> Here are men responsible for the deaths and injury of (jointly) hundreds
> of Allied lives in WW II...and the sons, nephews, etc. of these demised
> veterans are queuing up to adulate and faun over them as heros.
Remember something very important: the label of hero vs. villian is determined
by who wins. Had the Allies lost WWII, Eisenhour and Churchill would have been
the bad guys.
Pilots (in general) did not spin up their engines and go off to specifically
kill other people. They were soldiers in a military operation following orders.
Many chose to be fairly apolitical. As I recall, Galland was fairly neutral on
political topics during the war, and fairly critical of Hitler after the war.
Granted, he might have been expressing criticism just to avoid possible
repercussions, but then again those members of Hitler's forces that were con-
sidered true war criminals were aggressively pursued and punished when caught.
Many of these fellows were determined to have been just doing their duty, as
much as any pilot flying for the Allies.
> Do not misunderstand, I appreciate the ability to recognize a person's
> superior talents and achievement of greatness, but there are Allied Aces
> still alive! Why not invite them?
They do get invited, as it happens. When I was president of IPMS/Denver, I
had two speakers come to our meetings within a three-month period. One was
a former Luftwaffe pilot who had flown Ju 88s, Bf 109s, and the Me 262. The
other was one of the pilots who had flown a B-25 off of the USS Hornet with
Doolittle in 1942. And believe me, the contrast between these two men was as
interesting as the stories they had to tell. :-)
> I did not have the poor breeding it would have taken to confront these
> Aryan knights, but I would have liked to have heard their thoughts on
> being the object of the admiration of the descendants of the men they had
> slain.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but from talking to a former Luftwaffe pilot
personally, he seems to understand that we are historians, amateur as we may
be. We are as interested in Allied forces as we are in German forces, but the
difference is that we have always had access to more information about the
Allied forces that we have had from the "other side". Maybe that is why it
seems that we have more of a fascination.
Randy
--
^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
Randy J. Ray -- U S WEST Technologies IAD/CSS/DPDS Phone: (303)595-2869
Denver, CO rj...@uswest.com
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
TAnder9192
mechanical engineer, when I went to college I was smart enough to choose
engineering instead of my love for WW II history. A lot of the allied
pilots are still around and everybody loves to listen to their there
stories. The axis pilots are the dark mystery. Their pictures and
flamboynt liofestyle entrigues many of us. As the Soviet Unions records
are uncovered beyond the great patriotic rhetoric that has plagued
historians for true details. These pilots stories will surface more.
But!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There has been to many revisionist histories
popping up in the time of political correctness. And each person likes
what they like!!!!!!! p-51s, japanese zeros, trees, birds , flowers. to
each his own. And don't get me started on the lack of 1/48 scale british
and russian bombers on the market.
just my 1.2 cents the governmwnt has taxed me on the whole two cents
BIG TODD
Philip M. Hall
You know, I imagine that in places like Berlin and Hamburg those B-17
and B-24 pilots aren't though of as heroes.
Phil
Kweals
meet Gen. Dieter Hyrbak, former Luftwaffe Expert from JG54 Green Hearts. I
believe that he knocked down 150 allied aircraft. Gen. Hyrbak was quite a
gentlemen nad thoroughly charmed my wife-who is a fluent german speaker.
Anyways, he was alive 3yrs ago
Rafael Rodriguez
>Am I the only one that is struck by the irony of this?
>
>Here are men responsible for the deaths and injury of (jointly) hundreds
>of Allied lives in WW II...and the sons, nephews, etc. of these demised
>veterans are queuing up to adulate and faun over them as heros.
>
Once I heard a story about a Luftwaffe veteran who sought admittance to a
club of WWII veteran aviators, in the UK I think, and was denied it. He
then asked why he then argued with whoever was in charge that there were
no ground for this rejection as he was a veteran WWII aviator an he could
prove it. Then finally he was told the real reason: "But you were the
enemy!" to which he answered: "No, you are wrong. YOU were the enemy!".
He was admitted on the spot.
I don't know if this story is true or not, but it serves to illustrate
the point that there are always to sides of a coin. Somebody else could
be struck by the irony of a group of veterans sharing diner and their
experiences with the sons, nephews, etc. of those who bombed to death
around 5 million German civilians during WWII.
Both sides had gallant and brave warriors (not only aviators) and I don't
see why Luftwaffe veterans or any other air forces veterans should be
excluded from being invited to share their experiences with younger
generations. And the fact that today it was the Germans, doesn't mean
tomorrow it couldn't be the British or the Japanese.
Just a thought.
Yves G. Blanchard
BY DAVID BINDER
New York Times Service
Just before sunset on Sept. 1, 1939, minutes after the first shots of
the Second World War were fired by invading German troops, a
27-year-old Luftwaffe pilot began dropping bombs from his
Henschel 123 biplane on Polish infantry positions near the frontier
town of Panki.
On April 26, 1945, two weeks before the end of the war, the same
pilot, flying his last mission in a small formation of Messerschmitt
262s - the world's first jet combat fighter - downed a two-engined
American Marauder bomber over the Danube.
Over those 41/2 years of fighting, that pilot, Lieutenant-General
Adolf Galland, shot down 104 Allied planes, making him one of the top
fighter aces of the war and one of a handful to have survived combat.
Gen. Galland died after a long illness last Friday at his home in the
Rhineland town of Oberwinter. He was 83.
As a schoolboy in Westphalia, he developed a passion for aviation.
>From building model planes he went to gliding, the only form of flying
then legally allowed for Germans under the Versailles Treaty that
ended the First World War.
In the early 1930s, his gliding expertise smoothed his way into the
embryonic and illegal Luftwaffe, in whose rise and fall he played a
central role. He flew combat missions during the
Spanish Civil War in support of the rebel forces of General Francisco
Franco.
During the Second World War, he flew warplanes in the conquest of
Poland, the invasion of France, the Battle of Britain and the final
defense of the Third Reich.
Along the way, he tangled over tactics and strategy with his
commander, Hermann Goering, and with Hitler. But he seems never to
have expressed remorse for serving a German war machine that brought
death to tens of millions. From the outset, his goals were to fly, to
fight and to win.
He started out the war as a first lieutenant and ended it as a
lieutenant-general commanding a jet fighter unit. In July, 1944, he
held the higher rank of general of fighter pilots.
But he protested when Hitler ordered his carefully constructed
strategic fighter reserve of 800 aircraft into battle against the
Allied invasion front in northern France, where they were swiftly
chewed up.
"At this moment I lost all spirit for the further conduct of
hostilities," he wrote in his memoir, The First and The Last.
A month later, he accompanied Albert Speer, the minister of
armaments, to the Wolf's Lair in East
Prussia, where Mr. Speer, inspired by Gen. Galland, urged Hitler to
concentrate efforts on air defence of the Reich, with emphasis on
increased fighter production.
Germany was then being pounded daily by Allied bomber raids. Enraged,
Hitler ordered the two from
his bunker and Gen. Galland was demoted for "insubordination," he
recounted in his memoir.
Captured in May, 1945 by U.S. forces at an airbase in Salzburg,
Austria, he was briefly transferred to the British, several of whose
officers knew him from captivity as war prisoners, for interrogation
by a famed British Spitfire pilot, Wing Commander Robert
Stanford-Tuck.
It was a reunion of sorts, for the British officer commander had
crash landed near Boulogne in occupied France in 1942 and as a prisoner
of war was given a lavish dinner by then lieutenant-colonel Galland.
Returning the courtesy to the captured German officer, the British
pilot recalled, "Mostly we just fed him cigars and wine and, you know,
just talked."
Gen. Galland remained a prisoner of the Americans for two years, a
normal stint. Years after the war, the two fliers went grouse hunting
together in Britain. W/C Stanford-Tuck died in 1987.
Adolf Joseph Ferdinand Galland was born March 19, 1912, in
Westerholt, one of the sons of a minor Westphalian nobleman's estate
over seer. He made his first glider flight in 1927, soon became a
champion glider pilot, and earned admission to Lufthansa's pilot
training centre at Braunschweig.
In February, 1935, he entered the Luftwaffe for still-secret combat
training, disguised as a civilian pilot, and was performing stunts
when he crashed that year, smashing his nose and damaging his left
eye. "Unfit for flying," his medical report stated after three months
of treatment.
He crashed a second plane, but after memorizing the eyechart letters
with the help of another officer he was again passed for Luftwaffe
duty.
When civil war broke out in Spain in the summer of 1936 Lieutenant
Galland volunteered for the Condor Legion, a semi-secret German
military detachment formed by Hitler to aid Franco. He was given
command of a squadron of outmoded Heinkel 51 fighters and over the
next year he flew 300 sorties against Spanish Republican forces.
In the summer of 1939, the German officer was dismayed to find
himself posted to the Polish frontier, flying the sluggish Henschel
ground-support plane. He flew 50 uneventful sorties.
Half a year later, he got the mission of his dreams: flying the new
Messerschmitt 109E. On May 12, 1940, over Liege, he made his first
kills, shooting down two Hawker Hurricanes flown by Belgians. Two
weeks later, he shot down his first Spitfire over Dunkirk, where the
British Expeditionary Force was in the midst of its desperate
evacuation. The following week, he shot down two French Morane
fighters.
In July, he entered the Battle of Britain, flying two to three
sorties a day escorting bombers and engaging in dogfights with
Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force.
In August, 1940, at the peak of the sky battles over London, Goering
visited an airbase on the Channel coast and poured abuse on the
fighter pilots for failing to defeat the RAF. He asked the young
commander what his fighter wing needed. "I should like an outfit of
Spitfires for my group," he replied, leaving Goering speechless with
rage.
For another year he continued to fly missions from bases in France,
racking up more and more victories. By Christmas, 1941, he had been
promoted to major-general, the youngest in the German forces, with the
title general of the fighter arm.
For the time being his flying days were all but over. Still, in the
autumn of 1943, against orders, he flew a new Focke-Wulf 190 from a
field near Berlin to meet a large formation of U.S. bombers and shot
one down. He did this again in the spring of 1944, shooting down a
B-17 near Magdeburg. But
this time he found himself pursued by four North American P-51 Mustang
escorts and made a very narrow escape.
In December, 1944, with the Red Army advancing on Germany, Hitler
diverted the bulk of the Luftwaffe's fighters to support his offensive
against the U.S. Army in the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge. Three
hundred fighter pilots were lost in this hopeless offensive. It was
not the final defence of the Reich, Gen. Galland had intended.
Although he had fallen out of favour with the German high command,
Gen. Galland was allowed by
Hitler to fly the Me-262 jet fighter. The two-engined plane flew much
faster than any piston-engined aircraft. By his account, production of
the jet fighter was delayed at least 18 months by Hitler himself.
But when it finally came on line Hitler said he wanted the jet to be
reconfigured as a bomber to be used in retaliation for the massive
Allied air raids.
"One might as well give orders to call a horse a cow," Gen. Galland
commented. The Me-262 went into action as a fighter in October, 1944,
and scored instantly against Allied air fleets.
In January 1945, Gen. Galland was entrusted with forming Fighter Unit
44 with the new jets at Munich's Riem airbase. But it was much too
late. Allied planes were raiding their airfield daily.
Following discharge as a prisoner of the Americans in 1947, he went
on to a successful career as an international aviation consultant,
first with the Argentine air force for seven years, and then in
Germany. He bought a private plane in 1962 and continued to fly for
pleasure for the next 20 years until his eyesight dimmed.
He leaves his third wife, the former Heidi Horn; a son, Andreas, a
daughter, Alexandra Isabelle, and one grandchild.
--
Yves G. Blanchard
The San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, Februay 16, 1996
Herb Caen
ALWAYS BE a Local Angle No. 7893: If you read the obituaries -- something
you should do daily, in case your name is there -- you noticed yesterday's
report on the death at 83 of Adolf Galland, who died last Friday at his home
near Bonn, Germany. A major general at age 30 -- the youngest in Germany's
history -- he was one of that country's leading fighter pilots in World War
II, shooting down 104 Allied planes, but he came a cropper on April 26,
1945. On that day, at the controls of an ME-262, the first jet fighter, he
shot down two B-26s and in turn was nailed by Lt. Jim Finnegan, flying a
P-47, the workhorse prop job known lovingly as ``The Jug.'' Yes, that would
be good old Jim Finnegan of San Rafael, now 73 and going strong as an
investigator in the Marin D. A.'s office. ``I thought something must have
gone wrong with Adolf,'' Finnegan said yesterday. ``We exchanged Christmas
cards every year and last December I never heard from him.'' Not only did
they exchange cards and letters, they stayed in each other's homes many
times. After being shot down, by the way, Galland was captured by U. S.
troops and sat out the rest of the war in an Arizona prisoner of war camp,
getting out in '47.
--
RClower
ol' Dad is one of them. He wasn't a "top ace"...downed "only" 7 planes (5
zeros, 2 Betty's) but he DID design the not-often seen "skull" insignia
for the P-40's of his "Burma Banshee" squadron. (Burma, obviously) He also
designed their patch, the Ace O' Spades with the Skull in the center which
is STILL the squadron insignia of the 89th Flight Training Wing based, I
believe, in Sherman, Texas. I recall years ago Monogram came out with a
tiny P-40 kit featuring his design...finally something different from the
usual Flying Tiger "teeth" design. He was pretty pleased. Dad is getting
up there in years and his health is bad...but he still can tell some
amazing stories about that little known group of pilots flying
hand-me-down aircraft out of the jungles. Yep...still a few heros around.