How A Luftwaffe Ace Predicted Germany’s Defeat 10 Months Before D-Day

August 17, 1943. 09:30 hours.

Rechlin test center, 90 kilometers north of Berlin.

Oberleutnant Hans-Joachim Jabs stood on the sun-baked tarmac and stared at the ugliest aircraft he had ever seen.

It sat under armed guard in front of Hangar 7, surrounded by a ring of yellow chocks and watchful eyes. It was painted in a rough, uneven coat of Luftwaffe markings now, but the shape under the paint was all American—offensive to everything German engineers believed a fighter should look like.

Twin booms stretching back like insect legs. Twin engines hung between wing and tail. A central nacelle, stubby and bulbous, perched awkwardly between them. A nose wheel. A canopy that looked like an afterthought. It was as if, Jabs thought, three different designers had each sent in a sketch and someone had combined them all rather than choose.

The P-38 Lightning.

Jabs had heard rumors, brief mentions in intelligence briefings—“American twin-engine interceptor,” “long range,” “used in the Mediterranean.” He’d never seen one up close.

Now one sat in front of him in the hard light, heat shimmering off the silver skin. And for the first time in 50 combat victories, Hans-Joachim Jabs felt something he had never associated with a machine.

Unease.

Not because the thing looked dangerous—his instincts as a fighter pilot told him he could dance rings around it in a Messerschmitt 109, if it came to a duel.

No, the unease came from everything around the aircraft: the secrecy, the orders, the way everyone in Rechlin seemed wound tight around this “evaluation.” It came from the brief line in the summons that had inexplicably pulled him off operations at the height of the air war over Germany.

Combat pilot perspective required. High priority. Report to Rechlin at once.

Reichsmarschall Göring had signed the order personally.

Jabs took a slow breath, filling his lungs with air that smelled of fuel and scorched grass. Somewhere, a test engine roared to full power, then wound down again. A Ju 88 taxied in the distance, trailed by a staff car. Above, the sky was a perfect late-summer blue.

This was Germany’s primary aircraft testing center. Rechlin was where the Luftwaffe’s future was supposed to be forged.

He wasn’t sure why the future suddenly looked like an ugly American twin-boom fighter.

He heard footsteps behind him. Hauptmann Klaus Becker, the senior technical officer he’d met an hour earlier, came up beside him, carrying a folder thick with papers.

“First time seeing the Lightning, Oberleutnant?” Becker asked.

“First time,” Jabs said. “I’ve seen British Spitfires up close. Thunderbolts, even a B-17 from a distance. This…”

He gestured at the P-38 with a gloved hand.

“This looks like it was designed by a committee that did not speak to each other.”

Becker actually almost smiled, a brief twitch at one corner of his mouth.

“Your first impression is shared by most of the engineers,” he said. “Ugly. Ungainly. Asymmetric visibility. We even have a few pilots at Rechlin who have tried to duel it in their minds and declared it no serious threat.”

“Then why am I here?” Jabs asked.

The Hauptmann’s smile faded.

“Because, Oberleutnant,” he said quietly, “the way it looks is the least important thing about it.”

He handed Jabs the folder.

“Come,” Becker said. “Before we talk about the future of the war, we should talk about this airplane.”

Three nights earlier, the war had looked very different.

August 14, 1943. 22:15 hours.

Operations room, IV./Nachtjagdgeschwader 1, Lüneburg.

The room smelled of cigarette smoke, coffee gone bitter on the hot plate, and the damp wool of men who had been in flight gear for too many hours. Banks of radios lined one wall, their operators hunched over headphones, murmuring coordinates into microphones. On the main plotting table, small metal markers crawled across a map of northern Germany, each one a bomber stream, a night fighter, or a ghost.

Outside, the blackness over Hamburg was torn again and again by orange blossoms of flak. The city had been burning for weeks.

Hans-Joachim Jabs pulled off his oxygen mask and helmet, feeling the sweat-soaked leather peel away from his skin. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His flying jacket smelled of exhaust and cordite.

He had just stepped out of his Bf 110 after another night’s work.

Two RAF Lancasters, both confirmed over Hamburg. His 49th and 50th victories.

A ground crewman had clapped him on the shoulder on the way in.

“Fifty, Herr Oberleutnant!” he’d said, grinning through exhaust smudges. “You’re going to catch up to the big aces soon.”

Jabs had grunted something noncommittal. Fifty bombers down meant hundreds of aircrew dead, thousands of bombs that hadn’t fallen on German cities. He knew the tally mattered, if only as a political symbol, but he also knew what the sky had felt like that night.

It had felt full.

Too full.

More bombers. More escorts. More radar jamming. More everything.

His Staffelkapitän intercepted him at the plotting table, holding a teletype sheet.

“Message for you,” the captain said. “Straight from high command.”

Jabs took the sheet, eyes scanning the curt lines of text.

OBLT JABS REPORT RECHLIN TEST CENTER 0816 AUGUST STOP

LUFTWAFFE HIGH COMMAND PRIORITY STOP

COMBAT EVALUATION CAPTURED ENEMY AIRCRAFT STOP

He read it twice.

“Rechlin?” he said.

“Yes,” the Staffelkapitän replied. “They’re pulling you off operations. Congratulations. You’re promotion material now, apparently. A test pilot.”

Jabs frowned.

“I’m a night fighter, not a test pilot,” he said. “Rechlin has plenty of men to fly whatever they’ve captured.”

“We don’t argue with Göring,” the captain said dryly. “You leave in the morning on a Ju 52. Enjoy the fresh air. Maybe see if their cooks know what coffee tastes like.”

He tried to say it like a joke, but there was worry behind his eyes.

The Luftwaffe did not pull men with 50 victories off combat on a whim, not in 1943.

That night, lying on his bunk in the shadowy barracks, the roll of thunder over Hamburg still echoing faintly, Jabs stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine what kind of aircraft would make Göring send for a night fighter ace.

He imagined some new British marvel. He imagined a four-engined American escort fighter. He imagined nothing that resembled the twin-boom abomination he would see three days later on Rechlin’s tarmac.

The next morning, the Ju 52 droned north over fields and lakes, its engines a familiar, reassuring rumble. Jabs sat near a small window, watching Germany slide by below—a patchwork of farms, forests, and towns, all still mostly untouched by the devastation he’d seen in cities like Hamburg and Essen.

For now.

He tried to sleep. Instead, his mind drifted back to the night fighter he knew better than any other machine on earth: the Bf 110.

He had 800 hours in its cockpit.

He knew the way the controls felt in his hands, the way the twin Daimler-Benz engines responded when he pushed the throttles forward, the way the cockpit rattled when he opened up with the 20mm cannons.

He also knew the way it behaved when one of those engines failed.

It became a death trap.

The asymmetric thrust pulled the nose around violently. The yaw was almost uncontrollable. If the engine failed at low altitude, or during takeoff or landing, you didn’t nurse it—you left it. You bailed out.

He had lost three squadron mates that way.

Good pilots. Experienced pilots. Men who had shot down dozens of bombers and died not because of enemy guns, but because one of their own engines coughed at the wrong moment.

If Rechlin had called him for a technical evaluation, maybe it was of some new German heavy fighter. Maybe they had finally designed something to replace the 110. Something faster. Something more stable.

He clung to that thought until the Ju 52’s wheels kissed Rechlin’s runway and the test center sprawled into view—a forest of hangars, test ranges, wind tunnels, laboratories.

Germany’s future in aluminum and steel.

He stepped down the transport’s metal steps and into a world that felt both familiar and alien.

He had expected the familiar: ground crew, aircraft, the smell of fuel.

He had not expected the alien: British Spitfires parked neatly in a row with black crosses painted over their roundels. A P-47 Thunderbolt, its yellow cowl now black, looming like a toy designed for a giant. A B-17 Flying Fortress sitting on tall legs, silent and incongruous, as if it had landed here by mistake.

Each enemy aircraft bore German test markings. Each sat under the gaze of engineers in white coats who moved around them like doctors around sedated patients.

Hauptmann Klaus Becker was waiting at the bottom of the transport steps. He was in his late thirties, thin, with a receding hairline, and carried himself like a man whose real battlefield was a drawing board.

“Oberleutnant Jabs,” Becker said, saluting. “Welcome to Rechlin.”

“Thank you, Herr Hauptmann,” Jabs replied. “My Staffelkapitän says you’ve stolen me.”

Becker’s expression didn’t change.

“What we are about to show you,” he said, his voice lower now, “is classified Geheime Kommandosache. Secret. You will discuss this evaluation with no one outside this facility. Not your Staffelkapitän. Not your fellow pilots. Not even your wife, if you have one.”

“I don’t,” Jabs said.

“Then it will be easier,” Becker muttered. “Come.”

They walked past the captured aircraft, the ragtag collection of enemy designs that represented the outer skin of the air war. Becker didn’t slow for the Spitfire Mark V with its elegant elliptical wings. He didn’t stop to point out the Thunderbolt’s huge radial engine.

He led Jabs straight to Hangar 7.

The Lightning waited inside, washed in yellowish light from overhead lamps, its metal skin gleaming.

“The P-38 Lightning,” Becker said. “Captured intact in March after an emergency landing in occupied France. The pilot got lost, ran out of fuel, and put it down in a field. Our soldiers put their guns in his face before he had time to think about setting it on fire. We’ve conducted 47 hours of ground testing and 12 hours of flight testing.”

He paused, then added:

“Reichsmarschall Göring wants an operational assessment from a combat pilot. Specifically, one with twin-engine experience.”

“That explains me,” Jabs said.

He didn’t ask why Becker looked as if he were delivering a death sentence rather than an exciting test assignment.

He would find out soon enough.

At 09:45, they walked around the aircraft together.

Up close, the P-38 was even stranger.

The twin Allison V-1710 engines sat in the leading edges of the wings, one on each side, each capable of nearly 1,500 horsepower. Twelve cylinders each, liquid-cooled, their exhaust stacks canted sleekly back. The propellers were counter-rotating: one turned clockwise, the other counterclockwise.

The central nacelle held the cockpit, the nose gear, and the concentrated armament. The pilot sat ahead of the wing roots, his view forward unobstructed.

The twin booms stretched back to the tail, where a high horizontal stabilizer connected them, braced by two large vertical fins.

Jabs crouched, inspected the joint between wing and boom.

He shook his head.

“The thing looks ungainly,” he said. “The booms must create blind spots. From certain angles, a Bf 109 could slip into those and disappear. In a dogfight, I’d want something cleaner.”

“Ugly,” Becker summed up.

“Ugly,” Jabs echoed.

“Visibility?” Becker asked.

“Forward is good,” Jabs admitted. “But the booms… yes, there are angles. Asymmetric visibility. I’d rather have a single tail. A tighter design.”

He expected Becker to nod and move on, to treat the Lightning as a curiosity.

Instead, the Hauptmann opened the folder.

“That was our initial impression,” Becker said. “Now keep examining it.”

Jabs climbed onto the wing, boots thudding softly on the metal. He reached down with a bare hand and ran his fingers along the skin of the fuselage.

It was smooth.

Not just smooth in the way any well-built aircraft was. This was something else. The rivets were flush. Panel lines were tight, almost invisible. There were no irregular gaps, no rough edges where a worker’s file had left its mark.

He had watched Bf 110s being assembled in Gotha. Each airframe had required skilled hands—men and women who knew how to fit metal to metal, how to coax pieces into alignment. Each aircraft was a cousin to the next, not an identical twin.

This P-38 looked as if it had been stamped out by a machine.

“The tolerances are tight,” Jabs said quietly. “Tighter than anything we’re producing.”

“Precision interchangeable parts,” Becker said. “Every component manufactured to identical specifications. No hand fitting required during assembly.”

Jabs frowned.

“That requires machines,” he said. “Jigs. Tools we do not have.”

“It requires factories built for that purpose,” Becker replied. “Factories that can be replicated.”

Jabs moved forward on the wing, toward the nose.

“Armament?” he asked.

Becker pointed.

“One 20mm Hispano cannon,” he said, “and four .50 caliber Browning machine guns. All nose-mounted.”

All the firepower was clustered on the centerline, directly ahead of the pilot.

No worrying about convergence. No need to set your guns to meet at 200 or 300 meters. No need to guess whether the bomber would be at the right distance when you pulled the trigger.

German fighters, by contrast, carried guns in the wings—MG 151/20 cannons, MG 131 machine guns. You chose a convergence distance, a point in space where your bullets and shells would cross. Too close or too far, and half your rounds would go wide.

“Point and shoot,” Jabs murmured.

“At close range,” Becker said, “devastating. The test pilots report that if you put the nose on a bomber and fire, you will hit something important.”

“That,” Jabs said, “I respect.”

“But that,” Becker added, “is not what concerns us.”

He gestured toward the engines.

“We need to show you something else. Come.”

They left the hangar and walked to the engine test cell. The building was reinforced concrete, thick walls streaked with oil stains. Inside, one of the P-38’s Allison V-1710 engines sat bolted to a test stand, its cowling removed. Work benches around it were covered in parts—pistons, valves, sections of crankshaft—each labeled with meticulous care.

The smell of hot oil and metal filled the room.

Becker handed Jabs a technical report, opened to page seven.

“Read the flight test summary,” he said.

Jabs scanned the dense type, his eyes catching on a paragraph.

Test pilot Leutnant Werner Hoffmann conducted single-engine failure simulation at 6,000 meters altitude. Right engine shut down completely. Aircraft maintained level flight. No significant loss of control authority. Pilot reported aircraft “surprisingly manageable on single engine.” Total single-engine flight time: 90 minutes, including climb to 7,000 meters, combat maneuver simulation, and normal landing.

Jabs blinked.

“Ninety minutes?” he said.

“Ninety minutes,” Becker confirmed. “Hoffmann flew a complete circuit. Climbed, turned, simulated attacks, then landed with one engine dead.”

Jabs stared at the block of text as if it might rearrange itself into something less impossible.

The Bf 110 with one engine out was a wild animal. You fought the yaw with full rudder, mashed pedals, all the strength in your legs. Any mistake at low speed, and the machine rolled over and killed you.

He thought of the three squadron mates he’d lost to single-engine failure. Men who’d faced a choice between riding a crippled heavy fighter into the ground or taking their chances under silk.

In the P-38, you rode it out.

“How?” he asked.

Becker walked to the test stand and tapped the engine mount with his knuckles.

“Counter-rotating propellers,” he said. “They eliminate torque asymmetry. You don’t have one engine trying to twist the aircraft in one direction and the other in the opposite.”

He pointed to a diagram pinned to a board—top-down views of the P-38’s layout.

“The engines are mounted close to the fuselage centerline,” he said. “Look at the moment arm. Minimal. The twin booms distribute weight symmetrically. The vertical stabilizers are large. When one engine fails, the yaw force is manageable.”

Jabs thought of the Bf 110’s engine mounts—slung out on the wings, hand-fitted, each slightly different. Weight distribution that varied from aircraft to aircraft. He thought of the sudden, vicious twist when an engine coughed.

“We designed performance,” Becker said quietly. “They designed redundancy.”

He looked at Jabs.

“We assumed engines would not fail. They assumed they would.”

Jabs stared at the disassembled Allison, its pistons gleaming under the workshop lights, every piece measured, labeled, stored in tidy trays.

This wasn’t about a single aircraft being better or worse.

It was about philosophy.

German engineering optimized for peak performance, for that last 20 kilometers per hour of speed, that extra climb rate, that steeper dive.

American engineering optimized for survival, for making sure the pilot came home even if the machine didn’t.

In combat, survival mattered more.

That thought sat in his stomach like a stone as Becker led him to the next building.

By 11:45, they were in a briefing room with maps pinned to the walls and chalk dust in the air.

Becker spread a chart of Europe across the table and placed a ruler from England to France.

“Combat radius of the Lightning,” he said, tapping the technical sheet. “With drop tanks: approximately 650 miles. Without, around 450.”

He used a pencil to draw a circle centered on southern England with a radius of 650 miles.

The circle encompassed all of occupied France. All of Belgium. The Netherlands. It reached deep into Germany—Ruhr, Berlin, Leipzig, even down toward Munich.

“Triple our best fighter range,” Jabs said.

“Approximately,” Becker replied. “Bf 109G with drop tank: 350 miles combat radius. Fw 190A: 320. Bf 110G: perhaps 450 at best, but it burns fuel at a rate that makes long escort duties impractical.”

Becker sketched smaller circles for each German type. They barely reached beyond the western borders.

Jabs stared at the map.

German fighter tactics for years had been built on one assumption: bombers would outfly their escorts. Intercepts were planned for the moment when the fighters had to turn back for fuel, leaving the heavy bombers naked and vulnerable.

Intercept them beyond escort range. Climb above them. Dive through their formations. Break away before the escorts, tired and at the edge of their range, could interfere.

If American fighters could escort bombers to Berlin, there was no “beyond escort range.”

“How?” Jabs asked, though he already knew the numbers were about to hurt.

“Fuel capacity,” Becker said. He flipped to the fuel system diagram. “The P-38 carries approximately 410 gallons internally. Add two 150-gallon drop tanks, and you have 710 gallons.”

He wrote on the chalkboard.

“Specific fuel consumption at cruise: 0.48 pounds per horsepower-hour,” he said, reciting from the technical sheet. “At 25,000 feet, at cruise power, each engine burns about 40 gallons per hour. Both engines together: 80 gallons per hour.”

He paused, did the math.

“710 gallons divided by 80 gallons per hour is 8.8 hours,” Becker said. “At a cruise speed of 290 miles per hour, maximum range is roughly 2,550 miles. Combat radius, accounting for higher power settings over the target and reserve fuel, is about 650 miles.”

He turned back to Jabs.

“Now compare that to the Bf 109G,” he said. “Internal fuel: 88 gallons. Drop tank: 66 gallons. Total: 154 gallons. At cruise, the DB 605 burns 72 gallons per hour. That’s just over two hours of endurance at roughly 280 miles per hour. Maximum range: 590 miles. Combat radius: 350.”

The numbers were not just different; they were from different worlds.

The P-38 had four and a half times the fuel capacity and nearly triple the combat radius of a Bf 109.

“What happens,” Jabs said slowly, “when they start escorting bomber formations to Berlin?”

Becker’s expression tightened.

“We’ve run that scenario,” he said. “If 100 P-38s escort a bomber formation and we scramble 200 Bf 109s to intercept, our fighters have about 15 minutes of useful combat time over the target before they must turn back for fuel. The P-38s can remain over the area for roughly 90 minutes.”

He drew a line on the board—time versus presence.

“Our pilots attack,” he said. “They climb, dive, fire, and then fuel gauges force them to break off, whether they’ve shot down ten enemies or none. Fresh German fighters scramble, engage, break off. The P-38s remain. By the time the bombers egress, our fighters are either on the ground refueling or too far away to intercept.”

Jabs thought of the flak bursts his night fighters usually picked out over German cities. He imagined American daylight bombers coming with a curtain of P-38s around them, staying, circling, killing.

“They don’t need to shoot us all down,” Jabs said. “They just need to outlast us.”

“Exactly,” Becker said. “And this is only one type of their long-range fighters.”

He pulled another report from the stack.

“Intelligence suggests the Americans are developing the P-51 Mustang with even greater range,” he said. “A single-engine fighter that can go as far or farther than this twin-engine monster.”

For Jabs, something shifted.

He had always thought in terms of engagements—one night’s hunt, one bomber stream, one interception. Win, lose, survive, repeat.

Now he saw the war stretching out in days and weeks and months, and over that span, Germany could win every tactical skirmish and still lose.

Because the Americans would still be there tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.

At 14:00, they stepped into a different kind of war.

Becker led him to the industrial analysis section, a secured room where officers in gray uniforms bent over charts rather than guns, maps of factories instead of maps of front lines. Tables were covered with production reports, reconnaissance photographs, graphs that showed not front lines but output curves.

“This,” Becker said, “is the part you must never discuss with anyone.”

He opened a folder stamped Geheim – US Aircraft Production 1943.

“The Americans have produced ten thousand P-38 Lightnings since 1941,” he said. “Current production rate: approximately 200 per month at Lockheed’s Burbank facility.”

“Two thousand four hundred per year,” Jabs said automatically.

“Yes,” Becker replied. “Now—German twin-engine fighter production.”

He slid another report across the table.

“Bf 110: about 150 per month. 1,800 per year.”

The ratio was concerning, but not catastrophic on its own.

“So, they outproduce us in this one type,” Jabs said. “But we have other aircraft. And their aircraft must fight on multiple fronts.”

“True,” Becker said. “But we are only beginning.”

He pulled another sheet.

“P-47 Thunderbolt,” he said. “Republic Aviation is producing 350 per month. P-51 Mustang: North American ramping up to 400 per month. P-40 Warhawk: Curtiss still producing roughly 200 per month for secondary roles.”

He took a piece of chalk and wrote on the board.

“American fighter production, August 1943,” he said.

P-38 Lightning – 200 per month

P-47 Thunderbolt – 350 per month

P-51 Mustang – 400 (projected) per month

P-40 Warhawk – 200 per month

Total: 1,150 fighters per month.

“German fighter production,” he continued.

Bf 109 – approximately 1,000 per month

Fw 190 – approximately 450 per month

Bf 110 – approximately 150 per month

Total: 1,600 fighters per month.

“On paper,” Jabs said, “we are still ahead.”

“In fighter airframes, yes,” Becker said. “But look at engines.”

He laid out another report.

“The P-38’s Allison V-1710,” he said. “Built in Indianapolis. The same engine goes into P-39s, P-40s, P-63s. Mass-produced, standardized.”

He pointed to aerial photographs of vast American factories—rows of windows, parking lots full of cars, smokestacks throwing white plumes into the sky.

“The P-47 uses a different engine entirely,” he said. “The Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp. Eighteen cylinders, air-cooled radial, 2,000 horsepower. Pratt & Whitney is producing over 2,000 R-2800 engines per month at multiple facilities—East Hartford, Kansas City.”

He circled them with his pencil.

“If we manage to bomb one factory,” Becker said quietly, “ten others continue production. Different engines. Different manufacturers. Redundant capacity.”

He slid over one last set of photographs.

It showed something that barely looked like a factory. It looked like a city under one roof.

“This is Willow Run,” Becker said. “Ford Motor Company’s bomber plant in Michigan. One B-24 Liberator every 63 minutes.”

He flipped to another image—Boeing’s Seattle facility, assembly lines of B-17s stretching into the distance.

“Consolidated in San Diego. Douglas in Long Beach. North American in Kansas City. Lockheed in Burbank,” Becker said. “Dozens of factories. Each larger than anything we possess.”

He pointed to one particular aerial.

“This single factory,” he said—Willow Run—“is larger than all of Messerschmitt’s facilities combined. And they have many such factories. We have… a handful.”

Jabs stared at the photographs.

He saw rows of workers, men and women, in coveralls lined up along conveyer belts. He saw aircraft rolling off the line already painted, engines installed, wings attached. He saw finished bombers taxiing out of hangars in a steady parade.

He thought of German plants—skilled workers hunched over jigs, fitting parts by hand, making adjustments with files and hammers. He thought of how a single bomb on a single assembly hall could set back production for weeks.

This, he realized, was the real evaluation.

It wasn’t about whether the P-38 could out-turn a Bf 109 or outclimb a Fw 190.

It was about whether Germany could fight a war against an industrial system that could absorb losses and increase output in the same breath.

He knew the answer the moment the question formed.

By 16:30, he found himself back on the tarmac, standing alone beside the P-38, the twin shadows of its booms stretching out across the concrete as the sun dropped toward the treeline.

The afternoon was warmer now. The metal skin of the aircraft radiated heat. Somewhere, a motorcycle zipped past, a dispatch rider hunched over the handlebars.

Jabs lit a cigarette with hands that felt steadier than they had any right to be. Smoke curled up into the air, then was whipped away by a breeze that smelled of pine and oil.

He thought of the numbers Becker had written on the chalkboard.

1,150 American fighters per month. If the projections for the Mustang came true, that total might climb even higher. 13,800 fighters per year.

Germany: 1,600 fighters per month. 19,200 per year.

On paper, they were still ahead.

But the paper didn’t show the whole truth.

German production required skilled labor. Experienced fitters, machinists, craftsmen. People who knew how to coax stubborn metal into alignment. Every aircraft was slightly different, each the product of hundreds of subtle adjustments.

American production had deliberately eliminated craftsmanship from the bottleneck.

Interchangeable parts. Unskilled workers trained to bolt one piece to another and pass it down the line. Specialized jigs. Machine tools that set tolerances automatically. Assembly lines.

Production bottlenecked only by raw materials.

And America had raw materials in quantities that made German planners shake their heads—in steel mills along the Great Lakes, in aluminum plants powered by vast dams, in oil wells that dotted Texas and California.

He flicked ash from his cigarette.

He thought of the P-38’s twin engines, designed from the outset to make single-engine failure survivable rather than fatal. He thought of German aircraft designed as if nothing would ever go wrong, as if the universe would politely wait for them to finish their missions.

He thought of the 650-mile combat radius, of American fighters escorting bombers anywhere they chose—Essen, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich—and loitering while German defenders came and went like exhausted boxers.

He thought of the Pratt & Whitney R-2800, churning out of American plants by the thousands. He thought of the DB 605s his own machines depended on, each one the product of careful work, each one vulnerable to disruption.

He thought of his own 50 victories. Fifty silver plates on his scoreboard. Fifty RAF bombers turned into burning scrap.

Fifty meant something.

But if America could build ten fighters for every one he shot down, if they could keep their aircraft in the sky while his comrades had to land and refuel, then his individual skill, his prowess, his careful marksmanship, all began to look like an elegant sword swung against a tidal wave.

A staff car rolled up next to him and stopped. Becker climbed out, a gust of paperwork following him.

“Your assessment, Oberleutnant?” he asked.

Jabs took one last drag, then crushed the cigarette under his heel.

“The P-38 is ugly,” he said.

Becker raised an eyebrow.

“Asymmetric visibility,” Jabs went on. “Twin booms create blind spots. A good Bf 109 pilot with discipline and proper tactics can exploit that. In a one-on-one duel, I would not fear it the way I fear a Spitfire or perhaps even a Yak on the Eastern Front.”

He paused.

“But that,” he said, “isn’t what matters.”

Becker waited.

“What matters,” Jabs said, “is that they can build two hundred of these every month. What matters is that they designed it so that a pilot with one engine dead can fly for ninety minutes, climb, maneuver, and land, while a Bf 110 pilot in the same situation bails out and hopes his parachute opens.”

He gestured vaguely toward the map of Germany he carried now in his head.

“What matters is that they can escort bombers to any target in the Reich,” he said. “That they can keep fighters over our cities for an hour and a half while our own fighters have fifteen minutes before fuel forces them down.”

He met Becker’s eyes.

“What matters,” he said quietly, “is that we are fighting an enemy that does not need to build better aircraft. They only need to build more. And they can build more aircraft than we can shoot down.”

Becker closed his folder slowly.

“That,” he said, “is the assessment Reichsmarschall Göring wanted from a combat pilot.”

“Will it change anything?” Jabs asked.

Becker looked past him, at the rows of hangars, at the Spitfire under German crosses, at the B-17 with its nose art crudely painted over.

He didn’t answer.

His silence was answer enough.

Three days later, Jabs was back with IV./NJG 1.

The war did not pause while he’d been in Rechlin. Bomber streams still came in from the North Sea and the Channel. Searchlights still speared the clouds. Flak still blossomed over German cities like malevolent fireworks.

He climbed back into his Bf 110 and went back to work.

He flew forty-seven more combat missions. He achieved twenty-eight more victories, bringing his total to seventy-eight.

He survived the war. Many did not.

In the months that followed his visit to Rechlin, he watched the sky change.

He saw American fighters appearing farther and farther east. At first, P-47 Thunderbolts prowled over the coast and the Low Countries, heavy and fast. Then P-38s appeared deeper over Germany, their twin tails cutting through contrails over the Ruhr.

By early 1944, long-range escorts were no longer rumors. They were gauntlets.

He heard day fighter comrades talk, in tired, bitter voices, about P-51 Mustangs that seemed to be everywhere at once over Berlin, Leipzig, Regensburg. He listened to reports of bomber formations that no longer had to fly into the heart of Germany alone, of German fighter units shredded by swarms of American fighters that never seemed to have to turn back.

Ten months after he stood on Rechlin’s tarmac, on June 6, 1944, Allied troops came ashore in Normandy.

When word of the invasion reached him, Jabs thought of French beaches, British and American soldiers fighting up sand and shingle.

And then, unexpectedly, he thought of an ugly twin-engine fighter and a stack of production reports in a quiet room north of Berlin.

He realized that nothing truly decisive had changed on June 6.

The real turning point had come long before—in Detroit and Seattle and Burbank and in vast, humming plants like Willow Run. In the moment when American factories had shifted from peacetime to wartime production and never looked back.

In that August afternoon in 1943, standing beside a captured P-38 Lightning, Hans-Joachim Jabs had glimpsed the rest of the war laid out in numbers and steel.

He had seen that no matter how many bombers he shot down, no matter how many victories he and his comrades claimed, they could not kill machines faster than America could build them.

He had understood, with a clarity that chilled him, that Germany had already lost.

The rest of the war, for him, would be about how long it would take for everyone else to realize it.