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During the years when the outcome
of World War II was very much in doubt, the skies over Europe
were the setting for the greatest air battles ever fought. In
that titanic struggle, no pilots were more feared by Allied
aircrews than the men of Germany's Jagdgeschwader (Fighter Wing)
26.
Their distinctive yellow-nosed
planes always seemed to come slashing out of the sun with no
warning, and with devastating effect. The RAF pilots who faced
them soon gave them their own nickname, after JG 26's base in
the French countryside: the "Abbeville Kids."
Fighter Wing 26 achieved it's
greatest effectiveness once Adolf Galland joined the unit as
a group commander. Galland, a superb pilot, was also a dynamic
leader, and he galvanized the unit into the Luftwaffe's premier
fighter force.
Yet the grueling combat took
it's toll, and the Abbeville Kids suffered in the later years
of the war as new, green pilots took the place of experienced
men who were lost. But the unit fought on, right up to the Western
Front cease-fire, and ended the war with more than 2,700 aerial
victories, a ratio of better than three to one against its opponents.
Author Donald Caldwell discovered
a microcosm of the entire german war effort in the story of
the rise and fall of this fighter wing, from its founding during
Hitler's military buildup through its glory days in the first
four years of the war, right up to the grim last days of the
Third Reich. Caldwell based
JG 26
on extensive research in the
military archives of Germany, Britain, and the United States,
and in interviews with more than fifty surviving JG 26 pilots
- much of the story is told in their own first-person accounts
- and the pilots who flew against them. This is sure to be the
definitive work in English on the subject.
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