Adolf Galland: The Authorised Biography

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. 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 f