Free A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos

Roedel slapped a glove against his palm. “Stick close and we’ll come home together.” He hopped from the tire. The lesson was over.
    A ground crewman helped Franz strap into his parachute that sat on his seat in the cockpit. Shutting the square, glass canopy hood, Franz felt a new sense of dread, as if he had shut his own coffin. Franz pushed the throttle forward and fired a thumbs-up to two ground crewmen, who spun the engine crank. The engine sputtered. The plane belched a snort of white smoke. The propeller began spinning.

     
    H EIGHT MEANT EVERYTHING to a fighter pilot in the desert. There were few clouds to block the sun, so anytime his opponent looked up, he was blinded. Franz wore sunglasses but still held a hand over his eyes, against his flight helmet, as he flew off Roedel’s left wing.
    Roedel’s plane bumped in turbulence. The Berlin Bear on its nose seeming to dance. Franz looked out over the desert beneath his wings. The ground alternated in shades of brown and tan that indicated gullies and rocky promontories. To the north lay the scrubby green coastal hills and beyond that the pale blue Mediterranean Sea.
    The Desert Air Force’s American-built Curtiss P-40 fighters usually motored along at eighteen thousand feet, so Roedel led Franz higher, to twenty-five thousand feet, meandering between favorite hunting spots. Franz followed Roedel. Both pilots scanned the brown earth for the enemy aircraft’s reddish-tan wings. They flew over the main battlefront, marked only by smoke wisps from exploding artillery shells. The line ran southward from the ocean into the desert.
    As they motored east, Roedel’s voice crackled over the radio. He pointed out the British port of Tobruk to the north. Franz saw the flat, white city nestled around the ocean in the hazy distance. Tobruk was the strategic prize of North Africa, a door from which supplies and fuel could flow from the sea to the front lines.
    “Indians, twelve o’clock low,” Roedel said, the code words for having spotted the enemy. Franz saw four Curtiss fighters below, gently weaving left and right in lazy S patterns as they flew on a reconnaissance mission toward the German lines. Desert Air Force planes were most likely flown by English or South African pilots, but the force also contained Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Scots, Irishmen, Free Poles, Free French, and even American volunteers. From far above, Franz could see the P-40s’ sharp red spinners and painted shark teeth with beady eyes, a frightening war paint the American “Flying Tigers” in China had borrowed from the Desert Air Force. Franz sawthe red, yellow, and blue concentric circles on their wings that brazenly marked them as his foe.
    Roedel radioed Franz and told him he was attacking and to “stay close.” He peeled off and dove toward the enemy. Franz followed, his heart racing. His task was “dive, hit, climb, repeat.” This was the fighting style of the 109, a plane that could not turn with its enemies in spiral dogfights, but could outrun and outclimb most of them.
    Seven thousand feet below, the P-40 pilots spotted the diving 109s. Franz saw the pack of P-40s break formation and peel wildly upward, aiming their shark mouths directly at him and Roedel. One thousand feet passed by in a split second. The needle in Franz’s altimeter whipped counterclockwise, 22,000 feet, 20,000, 18,000.
    Roedel’s plane obscured half of Franz’s windshield as he flew just ahead of him. The P-40s seemed to swell as they climbed on their collision course. Franz had been told that going nose-to-nose with a P-40 was a fatal mistake because each carried six, heavy .50-caliber machine guns, more potent firepower than the 109’s two machine guns and single heavy cannon that fired from its nose. But Roedel seemed to know otherwise.
    Roedel fired first. Flames spit from the nose of his fighter. His cannon’s roar startled Franz. The P-40s’ wings twinkled in reply. Franz knew that a