In an account of unusual power, Luftwaffe ace Johannes Steinhoff recounts the final days of the German air force on Sicily in June and July 1943. Facing crushing odds—including a commander, Hermann Göring, 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 based on the author’s personal World War diary, this book is a classic of aerial combat. A concluding chapter assesses the war's lessons for air forces.