Adolf Josef Ferdinand Galland was a German Luftwaffe general and flying ace who served throughout the Second World War in Europe. He flew 705 combat missions and fought on the Western Front and in the Defence of the Reich. On four occasions, he survived being shot down, and he was credited with 104 aerial victories, all of them against the Western Allies.
Adolf Galland
A Fw 44J. Galland trained on this type.
Bf 109Es, 1940. Galland flew the Bf 109 in air-to-air combat for the first time over France and Belgium.
Galland's Messerschmitt Bf 109E
The Defence of the Reich is the name given to the strategic defensive aerial campaign fought by the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany over German-occupied Europe and Germany during World War II. Its aim was to prevent the destruction of German civilians, military and civil industries by the Western Allies. The day and night air battles over Germany during the war involved thousands of aircraft, units and aerial engagements to counter the Allied strategic bombing campaign. The campaign was one of the longest in the history of aerial warfare and with the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allied Blockade of Germany was the longest of the war. The Luftwaffe fighter force defended the airspace of German-occupied territory against attack, first by RAF Bomber Command and then against the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the Combined Bomber Offensive.
Maj. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle's fighter tactics against the Luftwaffe fatally disabled its bomber destroyer forces from early 1944 onwards
Anti-aircraft defences on the Flakturm Tiergarten in Berlin, one of the flak towers built from 1940
Destruction of Cologne after the 9 June 1942 attack
German training material for fighter pilot instructions