the He would have no rear gun turret at all. Göring sud-
denly snapped. Face glistening, he ordered the arrest of Udet’s
erstwhile chief engineer Reidenbach by the Gestapo, along with
his “fellow bunglers.” “There’s to be no court-martial... If
they’re at fault they’ll be executed. Just watch if we announce
in a week’s time that the former heads of development and
planning and the chief of staff of air armament have all been
shot that’ll make the whole herd of swine sit up and take no-
tice!” His staff listened in bemused silence. Göring reddened.
“The field marshal is always talking about shooting people,” he
screamed. “When I say it, it will be done without mercy. I am
not all mouth!”
Shaken by the increasing daring of the American raids,
Göring flew down to the Obersalzberg although he was now
understandably reluctant to commit his valuable person to the
unfriendly skies. As his Focke-Wulf droned south for four
hours, his colorful imagination came into play as vividly as
though he were once again on the battlements of Veldenstein.
Now he imagined himself an American air gunner, trapped in a
Flying Fortress while hundreds of Nazi fighter planes zeroed in
and hammered away relentlessly from every quarter. After an
hour he realized that his ammunition belts were empty. Around
him (in his imaginary scenario), the other guns were jammed or
the gunners were dead or dying. By the time his plane landed
near the Obersalzberg, he knew how to defeat the Americans:
attack and attack and attack. “There’s not one squadron that
could take that,” he told Galland and the generals at his villa on
the seventh.
Galland blinked skeptically and lit a cigar.
“How long can you fire from every buttonhole?” per-
sisted Göring.
“Seven minutes,” replied the fighter force commander.