Lonnie Ortega Aviation Art

Lt. General Adolf Galland, JG26/JV44

Commander of the Day Fighters (104 victories)

       Adolf Galland was born on 19 March 1912 in Westerholt in Westphalia. He began his pilot training with Lufthansa in 1933 and a year later joined the secret Luftwaffe. By 1935 he was an instructor at the Fighter Pilot’s School at Scheissheim. In 1937 he went to Spain as Staffelkapitan of 3/JGr 88, developing revolutionary new ground attack tactics and earning the Spanish Cross with Swords and Diamonds. His early war career in JG 27 and JG 26 paralleled that of his close friend Werner Mölders where they engaged in a friendly competition for the higher grades of the Ritterkreuz. By his 94th kill he had been awarded the Diamonds to his Ritterkreuz and was named General der Jagdflieger in succession to Mölders. On his promotion to Generalmajor on 19 November 1942, Adolf Galland, 30 years of age, was the youngest general officer of the Wehrmacht. The years that followed his assuming Mölders’ post were stressful and bitter as Galland saw his fighter force steadily ground down in the relentless war of attrition that Germany could never hope to win. The new weapons and tactics that he evolved could however, cause the Allies to suspend their bombing onslaught and buy time for Germany to fight its world of enemies to a standstill. Galland soon saw that this was a vain hope as every time the Jagdwaffe was built up to really effective strength levels it was scattered to other fronts. The last really powerful fighter force of Luftflotte Reich was soon dissipated in the hopeless struggle to contain the Allied invasion of Normandy. After a final blow-up with Göring over the waste of trained airmen in the Ardennes offensive, Galland was sacked and allowed to form, with other no longer voices such as Günther Lützow and Johannes Steinoff, the Me 262 jet-equipped JV 44, the “Squadron of the Experten”. Galland scored 7 kills with the revolutionary jet before being wounded on 26 April 1945. He ended the war with 104 aerial victories.

General Galland passed away February 1996.