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Prologue
The Burning Blue
FRIDAY, 25 JUNE 1943. Morning, and another scorching day of soporific heat. Trapani on the western edge of Sicily was crowded with aircraft: two more fighter groups had arrived that morning. Major Johannes Steinhoff – ‘Macky’ to his friends – twenty-nine years old and in possession of a lean, gentle face, blue eyes and fair hair, had been up early, woken in the grey light of dawn and driven down to the airfield to join the rest of I. and II. Gruppen of Jagdgeschwader – Fighter Wing – 77. Already, mechanics were furiously working on their Messerschmitt 109 aircraft, desperately trying to get as many as possible fit to fly despite chronic shortages of parts – from simple bolts to electrical wiring to just about everything complex machines like these needed.
Trapani lay on a dusty, sun-bleached, small coastal plain, and by the time Steinhoff had planted himself in a chair in front of the wooden dispersal hut, the dawn light had been swept aside by the deep burning blue of the daytime sky. Beyond, past the edge of the airfield, lay the vast wine-dark sea. Crickets and cicadas chirruped. The heat grew palpably.
Steinhoff was exhausted. The previous day, General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland had arrived, having taken over from the sacked and disgraced Generalmajor Theo Osterkamp, the former fighter commander – Jafü – on Sicily. Galland had been commander of fighters back home in Germany, defending the Reich, but had no experience of the Mediterranean and, while a notable fighter wing commander earlier in the war, had had no staff training and had been thrown in at the deep end to say the least. The previous evening, he had summoned Steinhoff to the Trapani fighter control base beneath the summit of Monte Erice, the mountain that dominated the plain below. The route up there was a winding dusty road, one hairpin after another until, beneath a sheer wall of craggy rock, it reached a small plateau that extended outwards. Several buildings had been constructed, while pneumatic drills continued work on a shelter dug directly into the cliffs. From there, the whole western tip of Sicily could be seen stretched out before them – the white houses of Trapani town and its small port and then, further to the south, the airfield, and beyond that Marsala. It was nothing if not a stunning view. After briefing him on recent operations, Galland had then told Steinhoff he wanted to talk to the Gruppen and Staffel commanders, and so they had headed back down the mountain road to the airfield.
Sitting on stools and in deckchairs outside the dispersal hut beneath gnarled old olive trees, Steinhoff’s commanders had listened in silence as Galland talked about the air defence of the Reich and the tactics that had been developed against the American four-engine heavy bombers. The key, he had told them, was to fly straight at them, opening fire at the nose of the bomber as close as possible then sweeping on over the top. The general also told them that against American heavy bombers, there was a 50 per cent chance of being shot down during a rear attack, and similarly poor odds for a side or flank attack too. It was hardly very cheering. On the other hand, a head-on attack greatly reduced the chance of being hit – but it did mean a pilot had only about two seconds of firing time, because it was only effective when really close, and with a closing speed of nearly 600 mph that didn’t leave much margin for error. Steinhoff had watched his officers start to glaze over. When Galland
