“So then, Mein Führer…
why?”
Göring stepped forward, his face flushed with disbelief.
“Your Excellency,” Professor Messerschmitt added in a far more restrained tone, “if I may, I would very much like to hear your reasoning.”
Even with his polite wording, it was obvious he found the decision unacceptable.
Several Luftwaffe officers who favored the Bf 109 looked equally unhappy.
(Thank goodness I didn’t invite Himmler.)
If Himmler had been here, this would have turned into a disaster.
“How dare you address the Führer in that manner!”
The moment those words left his mouth, the curtain would have risen on yet another performance of the Himmler Show.
Still…
I needed to make a statement.
The atmosphere had turned ugly.
It practically screamed, “What would someone who’s never flown an airplane know?”
If I were simply Katsumi Nakajima, the electrical engineer, I’d probably read the room, compromise a little, or look for someone to back me up.
But I wasn’t acting as Nakajima.
I was acting as the Führer.
And a dictator had only one option.
“Gentlemen, all of you are thinking only about fighting in the air!”
“If you were ordinary pilots, that would be one thing.
But you are commanders!”
“Tell me…
have you mistaken this new fighter for some kind of toy?”
A dictator survives by confronting challenges head-on.
The moment a dictator allows himself to be looked down upon, he’s finished.
“But, Mein Führer,” Göring protested despite shrinking slightly beneath the pressure, “the Bf 109 is faster than every other prototype here, and it is also the easiest to manufacture.
Its superiority is obvious.”
He wasn’t wrong.
As it stood today, the Bf 109 was the more refined aircraft.
Compared with the He 112—which still used an open cockpit canopy and carried an overweight wing structure that hadn’t yet been fully developed—the Bf 109 was clearly the more complete design.
But, Göring…
A fighter built exactly like this would never survive the next war.
“Then answer me this, Göring.”
“When is an aircraft at its most vulnerable?”
“…During landing.”
The answer came instantly.
As expected from a former ace.
People in this era hadn’t yet compiled the detailed accident statistics future generations would, but every pilot knew it from experience.
I pointed toward the Bf 109.
“Then look at those landing gear!”
“What are those supposed to be?”
“Deer’s legs?”
“Do you seriously expect a military aircraft to stand on something that fragile?”
“With all due respect, Mein Führer,” Udet cut in, no longer able to stay silent after hearing what he saw as criticism of his pilots, “our Luftwaffe pilots are the finest in the world.
We don’t have incompetents who collapse their landing gear.”
“Udet.”
“You understand nothing.”
“What you’re describing is peacetime!”
“After a pilot has fought the enemy and returned utterly exhausted, you’d have him land on those spindly little legs?”
“What if the aircraft has been damaged and can’t make a normal landing?”
“You say Luftwaffe pilots are excellent?”
“Of course they are!”
“In peacetime, hardly anyone makes mistakes.”
Standing only a few feet away from a furious Führer, Professor Messerschmitt finally forced himself to speak.
“Mein Führer…
strengthening the landing gear would inevitably increase the aircraft’s weight.
Given our current design…
there really wasn’t much choice.”
“Professor Messerschmitt.”
“You’re far too obsessed with specifications.”
“The Reich does not need a racehorse.”
“It needs a warhorse.”
“No one turns a thoroughbred into a cavalry mount simply because it’s fast.”
(Sorry, Professor Tank.
That line was supposed to be yours.)
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tank visibly flinch.
“I’m not saying you must satisfy every requirement the military hands you.”
“I won’t complain that the wing loading exceeds the original specification.”
“I won’t complain that the landing speed is too high.”
“Sometimes an engineer’s judgment surpasses the military’s own assumptions.”
“But you must pay attention to the things that never appear on a specification sheet.”
“A fighter’s duty isn’t merely to shoot down enemy aircraft.”
“Its most important duty is bringing its pilot home alive.”
Professor Messerschmitt could only stare at me in stunned silence.
Professor Tank, on the other hand, looked positively radiant, as though someone had finally voiced everything he’d wanted to say.
(Still…
reality is reality.)
If I had my way, I’d redesign the Bf 109 from the ground up.
A different wing.
A completely different landing gear arrangement.
I’d even overhaul Germany’s obsession with inverted V engines.
I couldn’t explain every engineering flaw in detail—I wasn’t an engine specialist—but history itself gave the answer.
After the war, nobody continued building inverted V aircraft engines.
That fact spoke volumes.
Honestly, when you considered manufacturing and maintenance, it might have been smarter to make air-cooled radial engines the backbone of the Luftwaffe from the very beginning.
There were countless things I wanted to change.
From the very foundations.
(But if I waited for all of that…
we’d run out of time.)
Changes that fundamental would make it impossible to field enough fighters by 1939.
Wing designs couldn’t simply be redrawn overnight.
This was an age without computers.
Every improvement required endless wind tunnel testing and painstaking trial and error before engineers could even begin approaching an optimal airfoil.
So there was no choice.
One of the aircraft already standing before me had to be adopted.
The Reich’s grand strategy depended on seizing the initiative early and never letting go.
We had already begun accelerating toward a wartime footing.
The only path to victory was to build enough momentum now that no one else could ever catch us.