On 18 April 1945, three weeks before the war in Europe ended, a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter of Jagdverband 44 was taking off near Munich when its left wheel hit debris. The jet swerved off the runway and exploded in flames. Its pilot, Colonel Johannes "Macky" Steinhoff, crawled out with burns over most of his body. He spent about two years in hospital and underwent dozens of operations; the 69th rebuilt his eyelids.

Most careers would have ended there. Steinhoff's second one was only beginning. Twenty-one years later he ran the West German air force, and soon after that he chaired NATO's Military Committee. Few people link the war story and the NATO story, but they are the same man.

From the Navy to the Eastern Front

Steinhoff studied philology at Jena before money ran out, then joined the navy as a flying cadet and moved to the Luftwaffe in 1936. His first claims came over the German Bight on 18 December 1939, when RAF Wellingtons attacked German warships in what became known as the Battle of Heligoland Bight. He flew in the Battle of Britain with JG 52 and claimed his first Spitfire on 30 September 1940.

His tally grew on the Eastern Front, where JG 52 piled up the largest claims of any fighter wing. He took command of the wing's II. Gruppe in March 1942 and reached 100 victories on 31 August 1942. He was awarded the Knight's Cross in 1941, the Oak Leaves in 1942 and the Swords in July 1944. He was also shot down 12 times.

A documentary on Johannes Steinhoff's life, from the Luftwaffe to NATO.

Sicily, the Jets and the Revolt

In April 1943 Steinhoff took over JG 77 in North Africa, and he led it through the losing battles over Tunisia and Sicily, later the subject of his diary-style book Die Straße von Messina (published in English as Messerschmitts Over Sicily). In late 1944 he became the first commander of JG 7, the first wing to fly the Me 262 jet fighter.

He did not last long. Steinhoff was one of the senior fighter commanders who confronted Hermann Göring over the leadership of the fighter force, an episode later called the Fighter Pilots' Revolt. He was relieved of command and sent away. He came back in the last weeks of the war to fly the Me 262 with Adolf Galland's Jagdverband 44, scoring six more victories, until the take-off crash that burned him.

Adolf Galland and Johannes Steinhoff talking about the Me 262 in a postwar interview.

The Second Career

After the war Steinhoff worked in ceramic painting and marketing before joining the Amt Blank, the forerunner of West Germany's defence ministry. He trained with the US Air Force as one of the first pilots of the new Bundesluftwaffe, became a brigadier general in 1958, served as Germany's military representative to the NATO Military Committee from 1960, and was acting commander of Allied Air Forces Central Europe in 1965 and 1966.

The Starfighter Crisis

In 1966 he became Inspector of the Air Force at the worst possible moment. West Germany's F-104G Starfighter fleet was crashing at an appalling rate, and the jet had a nickname to match: the widowmaker. Steinhoff concluded that pilot training, not the aircraft, was the main problem, and introduced a far more intensive training regime. According to figures in his Wikipedia biography, the loss rate fell from 44.3 to 9.3 aircraft per 100,000 flight hours between 1965 and 1967.

Steinhoff in 1965 talking to an F-104 pilot before take-off.

Chairman of NATO's Military Committee

From 1971 to 1974 Steinhoff chaired the NATO Military Committee, the alliance's top military body. He became one of the most senior figures in an alliance created to deter the Soviet Union, not to fight his former enemies. In May 1985, at the controversial Bitburg cemetery ceremony with Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl, he turned and shook the hand of US General Matthew Ridgway. He later said it "just seemed to be the right thing to do."

He died in 1994. His life covers the Luftwaffe of the Third Reich, the jet age, the Starfighter crisis and the Cold War alliance that followed.

Sources: Wikipedia (Johannes Steinhoff); Bundesarchiv; Nationaal Archief / Anefo; documentaries linked above