Göring walked into the room full of his top fighter commanders, and the question he asked should have been simple. What do you need to finish off the RAF? One man answered with a single request. “A squadron of Spitfires, Herr Reichsmarschall.
”
The meeting ended. The feud began. And for the next five years, Hermann Göring would do everything in his power to destroy the man who said it, Adolf Galland. Galland grew up in Westerholt, a coal-mining town in Westphalia, born in 1912.
As a teenager, he discovered gliding, and by 1932 he was training with Lufthansa. Aerobatic school in Würzburg followed, and he earned his full pilot’s license at a time when Germany was officially forbidden from having a military air force. His first combat came in 1937, in Spain. Galland flew close air support missions in a Heinkel He 51 biplane with the Condor Legion, supporting Franco’s Nationalists.
He never fought enemy fighters in the sky, but he came home with sharp eyes and a head full of tactical observations. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Galland was back in a ground attack role, flying the Henschel Hs 123. He pushed his superiors relentlessly for a transfer to single-seat fighters. The posting finally came through in early 1940.
He joined Jagdgeschwader 27 for the campaign in France, climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 109, and scored his first victories that May. The Battle of Britain made him a name. Flying out of the Pas-de-Calais, he racked up 57 confirmed kills between July and October 1940. His approach was disciplined.
He pushed his fuel range to the limit rather than breaking off early. Between sorties, he studied British formation tactics. After every engagement, he held detailed debriefs. He was among the first Luftwaffe pilots to receive the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves.
His face went up on recruitment posters all over Germany. But Galland was never the perfect poster boy. Since Spain, he’d flown with his own emblem painted under the cockpit: a cigar-smoking Mickey Mouse swinging a hatchet. He had his oxygen mask modified to hold a lit cigar.
When Göring asked his pilots whether they approved of shooting enemy pilots who were descending in parachutes, Galland told him straight to his face. That would be murder, he said, and he would do everything in his power to disobey such an order. The Spitfire remark sealed it. Göring visited the Pas-de-Calais that August and asked his commanders what they needed to beat the RAF.
Galland said, “A squadron of Spitfires. ” He meant it as a compliment to the British fighter’s capability. Göring left furious. The story raced through the officer corps and became the most repeated anecdote of the entire air war.
In November 1941, Galland was appointed General der Jagdflieger. He now commanded the whole Luftwaffe fighter arm, responsible for the training and doctrine of every fighter pilot Germany had. A year later, he was promoted to Generalmajor, making him the youngest general in German military history. He was about to learn that his most dangerous opponents were not flying for the RAF.
As commander, Galland took responsibility for pilot training, procurement, and fighter doctrine. But he never stopped flying. Standing orders prohibited senior commanders from combat missions. Galland flew anyway.
The rules for administrators, in his view, did not apply to him. By the war’s end, his personal total stood at 104 confirmed kills, all scored on the Western Front. He held Germany’s most senior fighter command and remained one of its most active combat pilots simultaneously. The conflict with Göring only worsened.
After heavy bomber losses over England in 1941 and 1942, Göring publicly accused the fighter pilots of cowardice, of deliberately failing to protect the bombers. Galland refused to accept it. In formal briefings, he argued that the Bf 109’s range made close escort physically impossible over certain distances, and that insisting on it produced preventable casualties. The argument was technically sound.
It changed nothing, except it made the hatred between the two men permanent. But his biggest fight had nothing to do with the RAF. It was about a single aircraft: the Me 262. Germany’s first jet had flown under its own power on July 18th, 1942.
By late 1943, Galland had test flown a prototype. He reported to Göring and Hitler that it outclassed anything the Allies possessed. He urged immediate deployment as a high-speed interceptor against the Allied bombers hammering German industry. Hitler refused.
He wanted an offensive weapon, he said, for the anticipated Allied landing in France. He ordered the Me 262 produced primarily as a fast bomber. Galland argued that this surrendered the aircraft’s decisive advantage. The jet entered limited bomber service in 1944, delaying fighter deployment by critical months.
By autumn 1944, several senior fighter commanders shared Galland’s frustration. Allied bombers reached German cities in daylight. Göring kept blaming individual pilots instead of reconsidering strategy. In November 1944, Galland joined a group of decorated officers in submitting a formal written memorandum to Göring, criticizing the management of the air war.
The document later became known informally as the mutiny of the aces. It was pointed and direct about Luftwaffe leadership failures. Göring summoned the signatories and threatened court-martial. No formal charges followed, but the consequences were immediate.
In January 1945, Galland was relieved of his command as General der Jagdflieger. He was given a choice: retirement, or a front-line posting at the head of a new Me 262 unit. Göring thought he was handing out a punishment. Galland took it as an opportunity.
Within weeks, he was assembling Jagdverband 44. JV 44. A unit of Me 262 jets, based initially at Brandenburg-Briest, then relocating to Munich. The posting was designed to remove him from the political landscape.
He treated it as a combat assignment. JV 44 attracted the most experienced, sidelined pilots in the Luftwaffe. Galland recruited men who had signed the November 1944 memorandum or otherwise fallen out with high command. Johannes Steinhoff, Günther Lützow, Gerhard Barkhorn, and Walter Krupinski all joined, carrying hundreds of aerial victories between them.
Officers called it the squadron of experts. Most had been removed from senior positions for the same reasons Galland had. JV 44 flew its first operations in March 1945. Conditions were brutal.
Allied air forces attacked German airfields continuously. Fuel supplies came erratically, and the Me 262 demanded careful handling. Its Jumo 004 turbojet engines were prone to flame out if the throttle was advanced too sharply. The longer acceleration phase left the jet exposed during takeoff and landing.
Allied fighter pilots adapted quickly. They positioned above German jet fields and attacked the Me 262s on final approach, when they fell to their lowest speed. The tactic was documented in US Eighth Air Force reports. Despite it all, the unit produced results.
From Munich-Riem, JV 44 targeted American bomber formations over Bavaria. They used R4M rockets at high speed against B-26 Marauders before Allied escorts could respond. Surviving records credit the unit with roughly 47 aerial victories. The Me 262 was faster than anything the Allies could put in the air.
But by April 1945, Germany was out of fuel, out of airfields, and out of time. Galland kept flying, leading missions and adding to his personal total as the ground collapsed around the unit. On April 26th, 1945, his Me 262 was hit in combat over Munich. A P-47 Thunderbolt shot him down.
He crash-landed at Munich-Riem with a wound to his knee. American troops were days away. He discharged himself from hospital and made his way to Tegernsee. On May 1st, Galland drafted a note to General Eisenhower, requesting a separate surrender for JV 44.
Two aides flew across the lines in a Fieseler Storch and returned with instructions. The remaining Me 262s were blown up on the ground before American troops arrived. JV 44 disbanded within days. The war was, for all practical purposes, over.
Galland surrendered to American forces near Salzburg in May 1945. The officers who processed him knew exactly who he was. British and American interrogators competed for access to the man who had commanded Germany’s fighter arm, then its most advanced jet unit. He spent months being questioned about Me 262 tactics, propulsion systems, and the decisions that had shaped the air war.
He was released on April 28th, 1947, and returned to a Germany with no official interest in celebrating him. He found work as a forester on an estate in northern Germany. His first aviation assignment came shortly after: lecturing on fighter tactics for the RAF. The same force he had spent four years trying to destroy.
That changed in the summer of 1948. Kurt Tank, designer of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, contacted him with a proposal. Perón’s government was recruiting German aviation experts to build an indigenous combat aircraft industry. Tank wanted Galland on his team.
In mid-October 1948, Galland sailed from Genoa, arriving in Buenos Aires the following month. He served as a consultant to the Argentine Air Force, advising on jet aviation development and pilot training. He stayed until 1955, when political upheaval following Perón’s removal ended the arrangement and brought him back to West Germany. While still in Argentina, he published his memoir.
It appeared in 1953 and became a best-seller in 14 languages, selling three million copies worldwide. Its operational detail was widely praised by the RAF and USAAF as a frank account of the air war. Back in Germany, he was approached about joining the new Bundeswehr. The proposal came to nothing when France blocked the wider European defense framework it depended on.
In 1957, Galland opened his own aviation consultancy in Bonn and continued flying at air shows. In 1969, he served as technical advisor on the film Battle of Britain, working alongside his former adversary, Robert Stanford Tuck. The following year, he appeared in the British documentary series The World at War. He died on February 9th, 1996, in Remagen-Oberwinter, aged 83.
Still flying until late in life. Still arguing about the air war. Still impossible to ignore.
