A German air force officer’s first person account of aerial battle during the invasion of Sicily in WWII.

In an account of unusual power, Luftwaffe ace Johannes Steinhoff draws from his personal World War II diary to recount the final days of the German air force on Sicily in June and July 1943. Facing crushing odds—including a commander, Hermann Goring, who contemptuously treated his pilots as cowards—Steinhoff and his fellow Messerschmitt 109 pilots took to the skies day after day to meet waves of dreaded Flying Fortresses and swarms of Allied fighters, all bent on driving the Germans from the island. A captivating narrative and a piercing analysis, this book is a classic of aerial combat.